Ruff Ruff New York

2009-07-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

On my semiannual gig with "Alba". This time in Sardinia.

2009-02-07T05:51:00.000-08:00

Peter The ...'s Birthday

2007-05-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

Our friends and partners from Afro Coffee opened their first coffee shop outside of South Africa in Salzburg/ Austria. They also carry their own brand of coffee, tea as well as home wear and accessories. We dxesigned some bags for them which we published earlier. Many more cities will follow, good luck to them!

2007-02-16T10:04:00.000-08:00

I went for a very short trip to Italy.

2006-12-04T20:08:00.000-08:00

2006-12-04T19:49:00.000-08:00

2006-10-31T16:46:00.000-08:00

Membership

Research. Research. For a new line of an Italian giant.

A bag or nothing at all– it is the essential accessory. It creates style, composes look, and signs a silhouette that it refines. Impossible to miss out on how the icons like Giséle, Anna, Kate and the others change looks by changing bags. First to carry the season's bestsellers, they set the tone and influence new dress codes. From oversized formats to the strictly minimum, from Dior's "Gaucho" to "Privé" launched by Jean Paul Gaultier, the variations are multiple. Choosing one or the other model is a way of showing the fashion 'membership' . Yet it all depends on the mood. The shoe option is also decisive. It gives the vintage to the trend. During the collections that become fuller with each fall, compensated and wedged heels take to the sidewalks, giving vertigo. Higher and higher, crazier and crazier, more and more cutout, they make sandals with multiple straps into things of beauty like sculptures; spectacular collector's items that magnify legs. Mink, fox, astrakhan, leopard-like pony, and colored crocodile in touches invade wardrobes. These furs make up the essential part of the accessories collections. Their chic is wild yet sophisticated. Leather has been renewed. Pleated, quilted, wrinkled, aged, pre-washed effects that give the illusion of reinventing the material make an impression. Black again essential to winter attire – the major wardrobe color, reference to Parisian attitude, the quintessence of style.

French Vogue 10/06

2006-09-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

From The Great State Alaska

Paula, Rosalind (my friend from Sausalito) and I spent one day in Soho, Nolita & the Lower East Side, and picked up a few great pieces, including Moschino, Issey Miyake, Dries Van Noten & some new pieces from Foley & Corrina. We met Andrea Ruff on Prince Street, where she was selling fabulous soft leather bags that she makes in her flat in Brooklyn. We couldn’t decide between black or red, but ended up ordering twin black slouch bags! Andrea works as a fashion stylist and sells her bags to clients including Molly Sims and Joy Bryant. Ours should arrive in a week or so.

2006-08-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

European Tour summer 2006. It looks like a lot of fun until you have to get up before sunset every morning.

2006-07-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

Preview of the Afro Coffee line. There is more to come. We go in production this fall in South Africa.

2006-06-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

I did not make an entry for a while, but that does not mean we are working hard. The bad news first. We are leaving the future in retail experiment in downton Manhattan @ Bleecker. I think a wonderful idea was mismanaged and we are pulling out tomorrow. The good news. We are producing an accessories line for Afro Coffee, based in Capetown, which is sponsered by"Red Bull". They plan to open coffee shops in Vienna, Paris, New York and every other major capitol.

A second line is in the works for a client bigger then life we won't talk about yet. But we keep you posted.

We will be present in five stores in NYC have our line presented at Magic. We keep you posted.

2006-06-23T21:38:00.000-07:00

Favorite Ruff Kid Chloe at dress rehearsal.

2006-02-28T18:42:00.000-08:00

I returned to NYC from a five week trip to Barbados, Munich, Nice, Merida. I am a fashion stylist by day as you might know.

2005-12-19T11:09:00.000-08:00

Istanbul

I visited Istanbul in search for new manufacturers. Here Mustafa and xxx of E'trade.

2005-10-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

Emerge is now Edge*nyNoho*nyc. 65 Bleecker Street, NY, NY

2005-08-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

Ruff Kids are out.

The lovely artist known as Lisa Alisa on her fifth Red Bull.

2005-08-05T19:00:00.000-07:00

Emerge*nyc

I open my first store at Emerge, 65 Bleecker Street, New York

My loveley neighbors at our new Department Store. Ume of charmnyc and Wendel Johnston.

2005-07-03T15:08:00.000-07:00

Move
I just dropped my boxes at my new location and I got blitzed by my niece and her friends. With David my friend and involuntarily Co Sponsor David.

2005-06-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

Greenpoint

I am leaving Manhattan. For the first time. The new headquarter in Brooklyn.

2004-09-28T18:04:00.000-07:00

Ruff Life? The Secret Life of a Handbag Company

By Bengala

Fashion Wire Daily August 26,2004- New York - The Intermezzo Collections/Accessorie Circuit show at the Piers is an indecisive shopper’s nightmare. Three piers loaded with every conceivable combination of skirt and top, belt and buckle, with dresses galore and even jewelry. Every label you’ve ever heard of, and even more that you haven’t, deck out their booths and taught their wares.

Most of this year’s show featured faded denim and gothic-lettered slogans—some great, but hardly cutting edge. Bowie reprints, Vintage Disney, yawn. As stylist Brett Douglas says, “There’s never anything that amazing. The cool kids can’t afford the booths.”

But that’s not completely true. At least one grassroots fashion experiment took the gamble and plunked down the $5K for their booth—the Lower East Side-based Ruff Ruff, makers of eccentrically fine handbags for every occasion.

Ruff Ruff was started two years ago by stylist Andrea Ruff and photographer Chris Wener. Both German transplants here in Manhattan, Andrea started making her handbags as a hobby.

“I had a really bad tonsillitis,” recalls Ruff. “One day I got up, pulled a sewing machine out of a closet and started sewing handbags. It was like finding my inner seamstress. A few weeks later I brought one of my bags into the studio working with Molly Sims. She had to have the bag and took it to the VH1 Fashion Awards in the evening. I still have the picture.”

But this was just the beginning. More people stopped Ruff in the street to ask where the riveted, fur-trimmed creations were available, so she made a few more on a request-only basis. The requests kept flowing until Ruff needed help filling the orders. Wener came aboard, photographing and designing their marketing material and they hired their patternmaker and a sample maker and voila! A company is born.

Now Ruff Ruff is on their second collection, sporting a new sleeker selection. If there’s a trademark Ruff Ruff look, it’s about accessories for the accessories. Previously, fur trim, fringe, metal studs and pure sass adorned Ruff purses. The sass is still there, but the materials have become more posh—crunched leather and nylon replacing any remnant of animal fuzz. And there’s still dangly bling in the form of hanging chains.

They’ve also added a second line—Ruffer. Younger, brightly-colored and quirk-chic, the favorite of this offshoot is the Kylie model. Named after Ms. Minogue, this tight little neon bag even sports an original Be@rbrick action figure as trim.

Ruff Ruff, despite its success, is still a mom and pop brand. It’s run by Ruff and Wener in their rented two-bedroom in the Lower East Side.

“I kid people that we have a sweatshop in the apartment,” jokes Wener. It would fit the history of the ’hood. Though Ruff Ruff isn’t forcing squadrons of children to sew fifteen hours-a-day, they do have a staff of six toiling away during the height of production season. You’d never know from the outside of the building. Nor would you suspect the Ruff Ruff product to be homemade, as it were.

Their covert operations won’t stay underground too long, however, as the Pier show brought them some major attention. Fred Segal, among others, is rumored to have placed a whopping order.

Ruff Ruff can be found at Ice Accessories in LA and at Nordstrom.

2004-09-06T23:57:00.000-07:00

Production Mayhem:
George the Terrible terrorizing my bags.

George II, (Super Mario) in Gomorrah.

The dark side of fashion: My living room in the Lower East Side

2004-08-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

Accessory Circuit

Our first show. Here Mimi Ruff and Andrea Ruff assembling the shelves
for the Ruff Ruff booth.

2004-08-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

Spring/ Summer 2005

2004-07-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

Ruff Ruff & Ruffer

Photo shoot and new postcard.

2003-10-28T17:42:00.000-08:00

Bologna

Twice a year my industry is making a pilgrimage to Bologna. Italy I love it.