Still, all is not forgiven. Rucci recently declined a profile request from the school magazine. “I would have to speak honestly and talk about homophobia,” he notes. “I would ask, ‘Do you have a gay organization yet?’ and they probably don’t.” His concern for young gays is more than conversational, as manifested in his support for Live Out Loud, an organization that provides scholarships to college-bound gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students in need. Rucci maintains that people working in fashion have a false view of how homosexuality is perceived in the greater world. Which is not to say the gay community escapes his judgment. New York’s annual Gay Pride parade “sets the gay movement back 50 years,” he declares. “There’s no reason why people have to walk along naked. There’s no reason why men should have sex in the daylight on street corners in the Village. It’s terrible. It just continues to promote prejudice and homophobia.”
We meet for a final time in August. Rucci boasts of a renewed spirit, having come to terms with the company’s recent layoffs as an essential response to the worsening economy. In case a previously made point has been missed, he proposes a conversational agenda: “I want to discuss something that I find destructive and uninspiring in our industry.” He then launches into a passionate soliloquy.“When we direct our attention almost exclusively to an audience that’s under 35, 40, there is very little to accomplish.…What is all of this with the Olsen twins? These are the oracles of fashion?... Fashion magazines [should depict] qualities that have to do with being grown up, qualities of poise, of grace…. The industry must grasp that what is the future and what is modern is intelligence, spiritual awareness, and it’s the appreciation of the elderly.”
Then, lest the profundity grow tired, he takes it down a notch. “We spend,” he says, sighing, “too much time listening to people who aren’t even bright. They’re just young.”
