While enthusiastically applauding this year’s choice of Rick Owens, we’re now officially spearheading a campaign to ensure that 2008 sees the NDA for fashion design in the hands of the vastly underappreciated genius Ralph Rucci (whose work for his label, Chado Ralph Rucci, was included in the Cooper-Hewitt’s most recent Design Triennial).

In 2002, Rucci became the first American since Mainbocher in the 1930s to show his own collection during couture week in Paris, where he returned a couple of weeks ago to present his spring 2008 ready-to-wear collection. We’re hoping that next year’s NDA jurors caught the recent retrospective of Rucci’s work at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Meanwhile, we’re taking up a collection to send them all copies of Ralph Rucci: The Art of Weightlessness. Rucci in 2008! You heard it here first.