“My definition of bad taste is the woman who walks into a room and everybody says, ‘Look at that Pucci.’ A dress shouldn’t precede a woman—she should come first.”
 
Clovis Ruffin, The Fashion Makers

In 1978, when The Fashion Makers was published, it was a time of euphoria in the New York fashion industry. Long subservient to Paris, American fashion was finally coming into its own, with stars such as Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Halston shining as brightly as their European counterparts. Clovis Ruffin, one of the fifty designers profiled in The Fashion Makers, was very much a part of that trend. Why is he all but forgotten today? Because, as we now know, the seventies were the silent beginning the AIDS crisis.

​Ruffin was but one of many fashion designers whose life and legacy were derailed by the disease. He died at age forty-six in 1992, and unlike many of his contemporaries, his obituary honestly listed his cause of death as "complications from AIDS." Ditto the obituary for Halston. For other male "Fashion Makers" who died tragically young, however, the obituaries obscure the cause of death, either to protect the brand name, the deceased's family, or a combination of the two. 

See also: A Quiz: The Mortimer's Edition

Image Credit: The Fashion Makers

“If, like my wife, you’re a Gemini, at times you just cannot do things.... To illustrate the difference between us: I suffer from sinus, and if I’ve been at a party where lots of people smoke, I wake up the next morning with excruciating pain—nonetheless, I get up. On the other hand, my wife can be so upset if breakfast is late, she has to go back to bed. I realize now it’s not caprice—she’s a Gemini.”
 
--Scorpio Emilio Pucci, The Beautiful People’s Beauty Book

Image Credit: The Sixties, A Decade in Vogue