Ralph Pucci
Leaders & Founders · Americas“Founder of RALPH PUCCI International, Ralph Pucci already sat down for a Conversations interview — five decades of sculptural mannequins, gallery-making and a genuine family design legacy.”
Why Ralph Pucci is in the Design 100
RALPH PUCCI International began in 1954 as a mannequin repair business run from the Mount Vernon, New York, basement of Ralph Pucci’s parents, Nick and Lee Pucci. Ralph joined the family trade in 1976, aged twenty-two, and pushed it toward something more ambitious: hand-sculpted, artist-made mannequins rather than off-the-shelf forms — a shift in method that set the tone for everything the company has done since.
A mannequin made for the French designer Andrée Putman in 1986 began a friendship that led her, three years later, to ask Pucci to represent her furniture in America, and the gallery side of the business was born. Since then, RALPH PUCCI International has represented a roster that includes Hervé Van der Straeten, India Mahdavi, Vladimir Kagan, Elizabeth Garouste and Patrick Naggar, alongside its own sculpture studio in Manhattan. Now in its third generation, with Michael and Nicole Pucci steering alongside him, the company runs galleries in New York, Los Angeles and Miami.