Student to Master: Godmother NYC Founder Christine Rucci’s Next Chapter
“I’ll be honest; I wasn’t prepared for fashion. I didn’t really know what fashion was. I knew that I loved Ralph Lauren and that was sort of the pinnacle for me. I remember finding W magazine, which opened like the New York Times back then, and seeing an ad for Ralph Lauren. And I was like one day I will work for him. It’s my dream to work for that man—never to know that I really would work for him years later,” said Christine Rucci, denim expert and founder of Godmother NYC, Inc.
Rucci has come a long way from admiring denim legends from afar as a teen to working alongside them. Her 40-year career in the industry has brought her to New York City to Asolo, Italy to the Cotton Belt and back, not to mention to the HQs and factories belonging to a who’s who of global denim brands.
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This year, Rucci is celebrating 20 years since striking out on her own as a consultant. Reflecting on her journey, she’s launched an online video series called “From the Bean to the Jean,” in which she interviews former colleagues and collaborators (the debut episode features Adriano Goldschmied) and she also has plans for a book.
Rucci is more motivated than ever to help small brands lift off and to support domestic manufacturing—two areas she specializes in. Here, she shares how she cut her teeth in denim, the value experience and how she stays plugged into what’s next.
On fateful connections
After graduating high school in 1981, Rucci enrolled in the Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.) in New York City but stayed for less than a year.
A chance encounter with Seventeen magazine employees at a punk rock club led her to apply for a gig at the teenage tome. The mother of Rebecca Hessel Cohen, the founder of LoveShackFancy, was the magazine’s long-time creative director. Rucci recalled how she opened her book, closed it really fast and handed it back to her and said she wouldn’t hire her because the job was a glorified gopher.
“I had never heard this expression,” Rucci said. “She goes, let me tell you something. You want to break into fashion, get a job as a receptionist and put your designs on the designer’s desk and one day someone will notice you,” Rucci recalled. “I sort of took that as gospel.”
Rucci went back to F.I.T. and on the school’s bulletin board found a listing for a receptionist job at PR Donovan Dresses, a company owned by Paula Rosen and a part of the Puritan Fashion umbrella owned by Carl Rosen. The job evolved into full-time “gal Friday” role, where Rucci did a little of everything from answering phones to organizing events.
At the time, Puritan Fashion owned Calvin Klein Jeans and the license for Girbaud—which Rucci said was at its height of its popularity. However, the company needed help communicating with its Italian denim design team. “One day they asked if I spoke Italian. I do. Then they asked if I wanted to live in Italy. I did,” Rucci said.
By the fall of 1983, Rucci moved to Italy to translate the wash recipes, production notes and other data from Italian to English for Puritan Fashion. There, she worked with Goldschmied’s Genious Group, a collective of global creatives like Piero Turk and Renzo Rosso and home to brands like Replay, Diesel, Goldie and Bo-Bo Kaminsky.
“It was the first multi-brand design concept under one roof but had the input of all of these designers,” she said. “Can you imagine? I’m 19, 20 years old, and I’m surrounded by all these iconic European designers and brands. There’s so much of the story that nobody knows that ended up having an impact on what’s still in fashion to this day.”
On experience
Rucci’s experience with the Genious Group revealed what it was like on the creative side. Back in the U.S., she learned about the science and processes of jean-making from Dave Smith, who developed washing and garment dyeing in the U.S. and worked closely with Girbaud in the early ’80s.
“[Smith] became my mentor and pretty much taught me everything I knew then about textile chemistry and garments,” Rucci said, adding that she would travel to the South to Calvin Klein’s then-owned factories to see production firsthand.
Rucci went on to work for Girbaud, Armani, Moschino Jeans and Diesel USA in design and creative product development roles that required her to master fit, washes, sourcing and fabrics. These all-encompassing roles would lead her to factories one month and on shopping trips to Paris and Milan the next month.
She also spent a decade in the Cotton Belt, overseeing production and quality standards. “This was at a time when brands were making 100,000 to 200,000 jeans a week in the factories, and everybody made their jeans in the U.S. I would travel one day to a laundry, one day to a dye house, one day to a sewing facility. I’d go to the denim mills to pick up the rolls of fabric,” she said. “I learned this business from the back of the house—the best education I got was going to the factories and learning this process.”
On consulting
Rucci racked up experience at Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Tommy Hilfiger, and Ralph Lauren. At Tommy Hilfiger she launched Tommy Jeans. At Ralph Lauren she oversaw corporate denim development for all divisions and was the senior design director for Double RL. In 2004, after having her son, Rucci started her own design consulting company, Godmother NYC, Inc.
Her clients span Draper James, Flag & Anthem, Mott & Bow and Belstaff UK to Ginger & Dandelion, Corby Holbrook and Raimundo Langlois.
“I usually work with brands in the beginning to help set up the blocks, fabric and the branding,” she said. “I take them through the business part of it, the merchandising and the whole process to teach them so they become self-sufficient. There’s a mentoring process that goes into it.”
Much of Rucci’s focus is helping brands source and produce domestically. Currently, all her clients are manufacturing jeans in the U.S. in New York, Los Angeles and El Paso, Texas. “I’m working with some of the factories and people that I know for over 30 years. So that’s amazing,” she said.
On denim’s evolution
Rucci has witnessed the denim industry shift from premium brands with unique point of views and specialties to extremes in both luxury and fast fashion. Offshore production has made manufacturing in the U.S. cost-prohibitive for most brands, she said, while consumers turn to fast fashion for deals.
Denim brands have also been damaged by expanding through licensing, she said. By licensing their brands out to “mega-brand global licensing companies,” products have become “cookie cutter” with the only difference being the label.
“It used to be that brands had diffusion lines,” she said. “Ralph Lauren had Polo Jeans Company, Marc Jacobs had Marc by Marc Jacobs—they were part of the house. I hate to say this but the bastardizing of brands, by making them so big and so all over the place, they sort of lost their exclusivity.”
On her love for denim
A denim tote by Levi’s was Rucci’s way to rebel against the uniform she was required to wear to Catholic school. “I’m bequeathing my bag to the Levi’s archive,” she said.
Rucci fell in love with denim’s storytelling and personalization qualities during her childhood and teenage years.
“All we had was our imaginations to customize our jeans. It became a statement if you started the school year with a raw jean and by the summer you cut them off into shorts. We would mend them and patch them and create something new. That’s why I really love how the pandemic brought out this whole DIY and upcycling revival. It harkens to a time in the late ’60s and early ’70s when there was so much creativity in denim.”
On denim’s boys club
Rucci said she finds it disappointing how great women in denim’s history like designers Claire McCardell and upcycler Melody Sabatasso are not as celebrated as the men in the industry.
“There is still a boys club in denim—it exists,” she said, adding “I have not made as much as my peers have made throughout the years.”
The disparity between genders has become more evident since launching Godmother NYC. “I get approached by people and companies to do presentations or proposals and the next thing I see is they’ve chosen a guy to do it,” she said. “I know I made a few enemies for calling it out.”
On New York City trends
Rucci is inspired by street style and soaks up plenty of it living in the East Village.
Young New Yorkers are hot for shorts this summer. One unmissable trend, Rucci said, is men’s shorts that cut off mid-thigh, styled with tube socks and sneakers. She’s also noticing more young people wearing big scarves as belts with their jeans. Carpenter styles are holding on strong, as well as low-rise wide-leg jeans. Workwear as a fashion statement is trending as well but she said the jeans have cleaner finishes and fewer rips and holes.
“I always call New York ‘Denim City’ because there’s such a wide array of people in jeans. I could walk in Washington Square Park and identify a whole bunch of different trends in a day based on the way kids and young people put it together,” she said.
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