Sterling Ruby on His Boundary-Bending Work in Art and Fashion

The Business of Fashion Podcast

The Business of Fashion

Fashion & Beauty, Business, Arts

4.6 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the latest edition of the BoF podcast, Tim Blanks talks with the artist, designer and first American in over a decade to present at Paris haute couture week. Even though he’s worked with Raf Simons at Calvin Klein and runs his own brand, SR. STUDIO. LA. CA., Sterling Ruby is perhaps still known primarily for his art: multidisciplinary work that often deals in dripping urethane sculptures, illusory canvases, and handmade ceramics. But on the heels of his Paris haute couture presentation in February over zoom, Ruby is becoming a force in the industry. So much so, that editor at large Tim Blanks asks him whether he would like to become a certifiable “fashion tycoon” in the near future.On the latest edition of the BoF podcast, Blanks sits down with Ruby to talk about fashion, Ruby’s future, and the blurred boundaries between his art and his clothes.

Ruby’s work is distinctly American, drawing on the nation’s history of puritanism and violence, wickedness and hope. That was present in his work with Raf Simons at Calvin Klein, and still reverberates through it today. “I always walked away feeling like I’d seen an echo of Stephen king or something. It was a very particular view of America,” Blanks said.
When asked to present at Paris haute couture week, Ruby and his team were skeptical about how they fit into the implied status, standards, and rules of couture. “We decided to kind of think about couture as our version of something made by hand.” Ruby said. “Maybe it was unique, maybe it was something that was strictly made in the studio, and that’s how it kind of came about. We justified it by kind of thinking that this is our version of couture.”
Ruby’s interest in fashion traces back to his youth in the conservative town of New Freedom, Pennsylvania, where dressing became a form of both rebellion and therapy.“I was very obsessed with clothes when I was thirteen, and the kind of power of clothes, and interrogation you would get because you were wearing something very particular in an environment where you weren’t supposed to, and I love that,” Ruby said. “I just didn’t realise that’s probably what the heart of fashion is.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're saying the definition of high art has broadened significantly.
0:06.3	I don't totally see that much of a hierarchy difference between, you know, making art, making
0:11.9	a painting, making a ceramic, versus, you know, making a unique, you know, trench coat.
0:17.5	I was very obsessed with clothes when I was 13s and the kind of interrogation that you would get
0:22.5	because you were wearing something in particular. And I love that. So clothing is a sort of badge
0:27.4	of belonging, but also as a symbol of rebellion. Yeah. And also a form of therapy. Yeah, without a
0:33.3	doubt. And I knew it was powerful. I just didn't know why. Trump's America was strong in that collection.
0:38.3	If we're talking about autobiography, it's kind of like painfully knowing that
0:44.3	demographic of middle American and of Trump supporter.
0:48.3	The Couture show, I have to say, was a bit of a nightmare because of COVID.
1:00.5	Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BOF podcast. This week we share a conversation between our editor-at-large Tim Blanks and the artist
1:07.8	and designer Sterling Ruby, who has recently been taking his multidisciplinary point of view from the art world
1:14.1	and applying it to the wide world of the fashion business.
1:18.5	Tim and Sterling talk about the blurred boundaries between his art and clothes
1:22.7	and the distinctly American perspective that he shares through his work.
1:27.3	Here's Sterling Ruby inside fashion.
1:36.6	Hello everybody. Welcome to B.O.F. Live. Today I'm very excited to be talking to Sterling Ruby,
1:42.9	an artist whose work I've loved for a long time,
1:47.0	and known to the fashion world because he worked closely with Raff Simmons on a collection of clothing
1:53.2	and then was very instrumental in shaping the identity that Ralph created for Calvin Klein.
2:05.6	And a month ago, Sterling did something quite unprecedented in the realms of art and fashion. He launched a couture collection at the same time as the shows were happening in Paris,
2:14.6	at the invitation of the Chambre Sindicalle, who are a very fussy,
	...

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