09/14/2026
We have incredible news to share: the Ralph Rucci archive has found a home at Cornell, where it will be preserved as one of the most comprehensive archives of an American fashion designer. It includes nearly 500 garments alongside more than 8,000 original sketches, 3,000 patterns, thousands of textile swatches, hundreds of photographs, and other records documenting Rucci’s design process and métier.
The archive is stewarded across two Cornell repositories: the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection in the College of Human Ecology and the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives in Cornell University Library. It is an extraordinary record of an exceptional couturier — arguably America’s greatest — alongside the atelier he built and the remarkable clientele for whom he created. It reminds us of what American-made fashion can be: breathtaking, sumptuous, glamorous, chic, and beautifully constructed.
Here in the CF+TC, nearly 500 garments representing more than 350 looks preserve Rucci’s exacting approach to design — and they will take your breath away.
We begin and end this first glimpse with Bil Donovan’s watercolors, which highlight a selection of Rucci’s designs now in the Cornell archives.
A major retrospective, Ralph Rucci: Taking Dictation, will open at Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in 2027. It brings garments, archival materials, and Rucci’s own artworks into conversation with the Johnson’s collections to explore Rucci’s inspirations and design practice. We are thrilled to welcome you to the opening in the first week of May.
For now, this is only the beginning.
The archive lives.
