Episode 11: Ralph Rucci

In Episode 11 of Handle with Care, Adam and Laura meet the great couturier, Ralph Rucci, who founded his company Chado Ralph Rucci in 1980. Rucci was the first American designer in more than 60 years to be invited to show in Paris by the French Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, then showing his collections for the next five seasons.

Recording from his Upper East Side apartment lined with plate glass mirrors, and simultaneously perusing the scrapbooks he makes after each collection, Ralph discusses many of his influences, from his mentor, Halston, to Balenciaga, to Pauline de Rothschild (and how he acquired a bed made for her that he now sleeps in). He delves into his unique creative process and relationship with the past while creating works of art that are entirely new inventions.

Follow Ralph Rucci's instagram here and visit his website.

Follow our adventures @adamcharlaphyman and @laurakugel_

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hi everyone, this is Laura Couville.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

And this is Adam Charlo Pyman. Welcome to Handle with Care, the podcast you didn't know you needed about curtains, chairs, lamps, and destiny. We are here with the great couturier Ralph Rucci, who founded his company Chadow Ralph Rucci in 1994 and was the first American designer in more than 60 years to be invited to show in Paris for the Oak Couture. According to Kathy Horne, Mr. Rucci's clothes have a devotion to elegance that can feel as pitiless as a sermon on a hot summer day. I love this quote. Rucci's gowns are included in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among many others.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

We really wanted to speak with Ralph about his influences, from Halston, his mentor, to Balenciaga to Putin the Rothschild, and his unique creative process and relationship to the past, while creating works of art really that are entirely new inventions. Ralph invited us into his stunning apartment in Manhattan and spoke to us about his inspirations and passions with such generosity and openness, going deep into that strange, invisible connection that draws us to objects. It was as though we'd known each other for years, so I hope you'll enjoy the conversation as much as we did. So we're recording. So we thought that one of the first things that we were curious to ask you was if you believe in past lives.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yes. It's not a question of me believing in past life. It's being aware of what I lived and having gone through psychological past life regression. And I've worked for my entire life with great intuition, but with blinders, so I wouldn't have to listen to anyone else. I would just do what I knew I was here to do. Now, there is a reason why my sensibility for fashion has a lot to do with references for women taken from the Orient. My lives there have been so profound, and I think they were the most enriching lives. There's a reason why I live with so much Orientalism and items everywhere. My favorite color in the world is cinnabar. I suppose my religious belief has a great deal to do with the sense of Buddhism that I live. I'm born Italian, but there's an entire Renaissance background that comes into that. So, yes, and then also there is the acceptance and awareness that we cannot think we have one singular existence. And as I said, indeed, I do believe and I just hope I'm not coming back.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

And so all those marvelous objects beautifully displayed around your house, they connect you to your own past self.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Absolutely. Everything in here has a reciprocation to my soul and my mind in a past life. And don't forget, when I started, I did not come from wealth. I worked a great deal. And then when I began to develop and build the business, and I had the luxury of being able to travel to Paris six times a year and work with the greatest visionaries, from Monsieur Lesage and Montext and Le Marier, Jean-Pierre Ollier, the greatest, and viewing the museums, viewing Kugel, Steinitz, the galleries where I would just remain silent. There was an intuitive association with fabrics. As time goes by, you're able to purchase those things. It's hard to consistently keep in your mind that obje art artifacts are here for the moment for you to enjoy. They're borrowed, and they have to be passed on again into the universe for someone else. We had an incredible sixteen thousand square foot office, and I had four extraordinary Francis Bacons and seven Say Tuamleys, my favorite artist of all time, and I would say about seven Antonio Tapias. And you're too young to remember it, but in 2008 and 2009, the world economy crashed. Remember, everything stopped. And I had to figure out how to stay in business and support 67 employees without sending them off to collect unemployment. And I was lucky to have all of that art. I couldn't look at it. And I just told my assistant at the time, bring in Christie's and Sotheby's. And we sold it all, but that's how I was able to stay afloat. And that moment I did embrace the idea that it was all borrowed, I enjoyed it. Now move on. I define myself. I wear uniforms. The obje that are here, that are gone, they define me. When I lose a piece, I lose a huge piece of myself. This apartment is like a sanctuary. I never like to leave. And sometimes I don't leave for seven days. I do a great deal of research before I set a pencil to paper. And I mean an insane amount of research. It's because I come from an academic background. When I was in college, I studied literature and philosophy. And of course, my simple Italian parents was, what are you going to do with that? Teach English? And I said, no, I don't know what. I'm going to prepare myself for the world. And and of course, art history. And I started to paint at an early age. So I sketch. But the consciousness of the first sketch is paralyzing. Paralyzing. That's a toile, for example, of an infanta in toile that I have to write on. It's going to be entirely embroidered in Paris with French knots, with my handwriting, and I have to think about what I'm going to talk to. The client has been waiting months for the fitting. What I do, I take images that become a stream of consciousness of revelation of something. I'm obsessed with that. You know what that is. Of course you are. This is a satin damask. And these are chairs that Lorenzo Mongiardino quilted for Princess Furio in her London apartment. Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Just irrelated things. And you pair them together yourself. Or it's just random.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

You stream of consciousness choose. Do you mind if I take a photo? The research happened simultaneously. That's why you see all those boards in the hallway, because I have to edit because I have to get cracking and edit for this new couture. And then years ago, when I had a huge office, I would do my concept board of all of these images all around me in my own private office. And then over the years, Dita gave me these wonderful books, hardbound, and she said, after every season, take the images and put them in the book. Oh my gosh, amazing.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

Is there a connection for you between the idea of research and collecting? Like possessing stuff and looking at photos of things from the past?

unknown 7:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

When I was able to be in Paris and I was working with embroidery houses or mills, I would also spend half of my days purchasing, whether it be a watch at Cartier that was vintage, whether it's going to Hermes and buying fabric. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

So why do you think that there is then this intricate link between what you describe maybe for yourself, but also Saint Laurent, Lagerfeld, Givenchy, at least that generation of couturiers and their collecting. Is there something that is connected and collective to all of you?

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Genius question and statement of truth. Every designer that we could mention, Christopher Valenciago, Hubert de Givenchy, Mademoiselle Chanel.

unknown 8:36

Of course.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Oh my God. Madame Cray, the greats, history. They're not even human. Their rooms define them, and they define the rooms. It's almost the dual reality of existence. That's what you're researching. That's what your podcasts are all about. That's why this is so brilliant. And you're getting me so excited. I haven't seen a psychiatrist in many years, even though I went through Freudian therapy for 17 years. And this is great. I feel like I'm seeing a therapist.

SPEAKER_03 9:07

Amazing. I'm curious actually to keep going with this connection between fashion and interiors because it comes up all the time. You know, I'm an interior designer and I look at a lot of reference images before we do any project. And we have them all laid out on the floor. I mean, it's really crazy looking, actually, but it's like a way of sort of like soaking up all this stuff. But, anyways, the best interiors that I have images of are nine times out of ten, either artists or fashion designers in houses. That's a thing. They go together. What do you think about them going together? What is that about? I mean, I think of the idea of world building, I think of other things, but what do you see there?

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Taste is a process of editing, and that you were born with. It cannot be educated. And it just so happens that some fashion designers have that huge talent. Some interior decorators have that. I'm gonna share a little story. In the late 70s, my first apartment and so on, I was very minimal. My first job was at Halston. That was all whitewashed floors and vanilla ultrasuede bonkettes and sh like Elsa, Elsa's apartment on 56th Street was all white. That white apartment with like the big tusk or something. Exactly. So that's on 56th Street. She would have one of her huge crystal bowls on a skid from the street that was Cloroxed, and inside would be a real lobster claw. And the lobster claw would be open, and inside would be a 15 karat gold called a diamond. Just a position. Yeah. And I lived like that in a very sparse apartment on 71st Street. And then Elsa hired Lorenzo Mongiardino to do Rome, San Martivel, Porto Ercore. And then I voraciously studied and read and looked of everything of Mongiardino. And then I saw Jill Sander. Remember Jill? Totally minimal. And what he did for her in Frankfurt. He installed a Sicilian opera house with torn silk velvet sofas in her home and it illuminated a whole nother dimension. And then I started to let the door open and allowed what I visualized and collected to become part of my life. And that's how white, it's not minimal in here. And then I discovered my dear friends Roberto Pedagali and Laura Rimini. So there is a reciprocation between fashion design and interior design because it's not only working with shape and color and proportion and balance, but it's the totality that dresses the wearer and dresses the self-unconscious self. So cool.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

In a similar vein to that question about fashion designers, art collecting, and taste, it occurred to us that there is such a strong Paris to New York link in that history of taste, in your profession, in our professions. You know, there is something about taste moving from one city to the other almost symbiotically.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Paris is the epicenter of all taste, whether people want to admit it or not. I would say Paris number one, Rome's number two. The decorators that have the clientele with the financial ability to purchase a tapestry from Kougal, the decorator must bring them to Paris because they're not going to understand that same article if they see it here at the Armoury Show. And let's face it, the American decorators, like, does anyone in America come close to Joseph Graf? No. The genius. Yeah, no, I agree. Paris is the epicenter for all things. For jewelry, for interiors, for antiquities, for art.

SPEAKER_03 13:12

So yes, there's a contextual thing, and that makes sense to me and is very real. But also, is there something else that has to do with something, you know, that is simpatico between Paris taste and American taste or American lack thereof? Or I'm not really sure what it is, but they're like two peas in a pot. They go together somehow, and it's like a funny thing. And I don't know what that is, but they're very strong together. And I know a lot of cultures, a lot of people in cities all over the world fetishize French taste, so it's not a unique thing to New York. But there is something in particular that seems to be an interesting relationship there about taste between fashion and there's something about the old world connecting with the new world and the future, and something I don't know. What do you feel about this?

SPEAKER_01 14:10

I think it takes a great deal of education and exposure. And America has dimmed on having the possibility of women who had homes that were all based on French style, but they made it comfortable their own way, like Evangeline Bruce in DC and Dida here in New York.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Even Jane Reitzman as well. Mrs.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Reitzman. So to answer your question, I need to think about it. Because to say something without strength behind it is meaningless. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

This is the perfect segue, perhaps, into talking about putting the Rothschild and your fondness of her, because she exemplifies somehow, you know, the American in Paris who shakes up the taste and kind of is really an T establishment, and seemingly she has played an incredible part in your personal story and past lives and your relationship with interiors and with taste as well, if you would say a few words.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Do you remember the great interior designer, an American? His name was Ward Bennett. Obsessed. You're obsessed. He's like my favorite interior designer. And you're going to love this. There was an artist who was part of the abstract expressionist group when it started in the 50s, downtown when there was no man's land, downtown in Eastside. Franz Klein, Jasper Johns, Robert Indiana, him. I was invited to this lunch at the artist's house years ago in East Hampton. And Ward Bennett was one of the guests at lunch. And my friends Bob and Diane, the three of us went for lunch, and Ward Bennett and his partner were there, and Diane and I were obsessed. So we knew that he had worked at Hattie Carnegie with Pauline De Rostschild when she was Pauline Potter. Really? Wait, you're gonna love this because you're so obsessed. So they were best friends. And Pauline took an apartment on the river, East River, and Billy gold leafed the ceiling. That's what she wanted. But Ward Bennett helped her. And so my friend Diane and I are out of our minds. We're at the table with Ward Bennett. So I said politely, but I was salivating, Ward, Mr. Bennett, can you talk about Pauline? And he said, Oh, I adored her. She was my best friend, and she was absolutely as insane as you can think of. He said, She always lifted her head up and she walked with her palms outward, like that. So Ward stands up and he is walking forward and he said, And you have to walk on the balls of your feet. I said, Well, what do you mean? On your toes, he said, No, just the ball of your foot. Pauline walked like that with her head up. So Diane shouts out, so she acted like a ghost? He said, Yeah, she was sort of a ghost. This is true. And we had the best day. But how did we get to that? When I discovered Pauline DeRoscio was in 78, and I happened to open up the first issue when Valentine Lawford and Horst photographed her private apartment. And you know they kept separate apartments. First of all, that intellect is insane. She and the Baron. And she would say, Philippe, you must we must make an appointment to see each other. So I devoured every page and I bought a small navy linen book. It's here somewhere in this mess. And I took notes, took really copious notes of the unconscious feelings I felt of what I was looking at. And then I dove into everything. I was hypnotized by the bed. I don't know why. Past life, taste, associations. She became the barometer of my future. But wait, Ralph, so you never met her? No. She died in 76. I would have loved to.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

But you started getting to know her through this pictures, through what she wrote very intimately. Yes. Intimately enough to want to have her bed.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Yes. I was obsessed. Okay. Pauline's private apartment in Paris, this was the on said bed that she designed that's in here.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

So you felt like you knew her.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yes. Oh, gosh, yes. The same with Mrs. Veland. With Elsa Paretti, with Tina Chow, all of these great women who I met or dressed and so on.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Smazy.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

They came to me. They were meant to. We knew each other in a past life. I was also doing, making a design, a product that attracted them. Today I don't have that clientele because they don't exist. And who was sitting at the front row of Couture last week? Cardi B. What can we say? Wait, let's just do a little more about Polyne. Look, she took pictures out of magazines and she just posted them on the wall. She took the barn and she made it into a library, and then she had Jansen make her these long sofas. They had both an intellectual reason for people to sit and read and lounge and a sexual reason. Pauline and the bathroom used it for sex. I got that information firsthand. I think this is not framed in my bedroom, but there's a picture of Pauline sitting in the bed, and that's framed in my bedroom. And I think we all live like this. We have books all over the place, manuscripts, things we're writing, things we're reading. And I think this shocked me. Buying the pagoda armoire, keeping the door open, and then placing that chinoiserie panel, 18th century panel inside.

SPEAKER_03 20:09

I can't even process the word Bennett Pauline de Rothschild connection because it's so intuitive, actually, that they are two sides of the same coin. Now that you say it, like his use of a candlestick in a room is so similar to her use of a candlestick. It's like an alien putting a candlestick in a room or something.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

You just said something that I used recently in conversation. These are the aliens. These are the people who came here to show us and teach us. And that's why we have so many aliens living amongst us more than than today, but I think they're here. You may be.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Are you?

SPEAKER_00 20:51

I think so. He's definitely an alien. I think maybe that could be your intro. Interview with the alien. I love that. My sister's going to love it.

SPEAKER_03 21:01

So would you walk us through the story of how this bed, your bed, got into this apartment.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

But starting with, if you don't mind, this idea that you knew it was gonna be yours.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

Yeah, which we we read, and we were just so taken with this thought that you would know something was going to belong to you, and then it actually did, is so cool and crazy.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

So many things in my life have come to me because I knew they would, or I saw them years and years before they arrived, and knew when I saw it it would eventually be here. Now, in 1978, when I first saw the photograph of Pauline de Ross Schild's Mass Yan Sen bed in steel and verme, just rods, proportioned, she designed it proportioned in such a way so that she dressed it herself. With the canopy and so on. So the bed was in my psyche all those years. And I remember the president of my company for 30 years, we would make a joke out of it. And she would make a to-do list for me 20 years forward. And one of the to-do items was have Pauline's bed polished. So I'm working, I'm building the business, and I'm doing trunk shows all over the country. And I would do a trunk show in San Francisco proper and one in Palo Alto for Neiman Marcus. And a woman came to me to introduce herself. Her name was Beverly Jackson, and she lived in Santa Barbara. And I remember the first thing I made her. It was a double-faced cashmere, fingertip length, side shirt tail, coat and jacket with a little rounded collar, and it was in coral, light coral, pink coral, not red coral. We became friends. And she would buy a piece every season, and I became so fond of her. And then she explained the story to me that Pauline became very ill, and they found this great cardiologist in Santa Barbara. So they were going back and forth, but that was too strenuous. So there was an existing hotel called the Biltmore on the beach. And the Baron took a floor and he brought over Pauline's best pieces. Her bed from her private apartment, the steel and verme bed. You'll love this. He brought over some extraordinary Louis XVI chairs, upholstered in the original satin de masque with chinoiserie. And in the hotel, Pauline would tie a gros grain ribbon so that no one would sit on one. But she wanted her to look at them there. You have to be obsessed with that. You're worse than I am.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

He is. He is. My brain is melting, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

So they were in the dining room one night and they had to stay at the Biltmore, the Baron Philippe and Pauline. They had to stay in Santa Barbara for quite some time. They knew she really wasn't coming home. And she said, Philippe, you have to accept the fact I'm leaving soon. And you need a woman in your life. You don't know what it's like not to be kept for. And he argued. So the next night they went back to the dining room for dinner, and Beverly is sitting alone in the dining room. Uh she was an estate, genius. Beverly had this home in Santa Barbara, and her bedroom, the bed was a Chinese opium bed, and she had one piece of art. She had one of those Imperial lady-in-waiting Chinese hats in black that were fan.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

Incredible.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

It would just sit there. And I don't know what happened to that because I said to her, Once can I have that? I'll just put it in a show. It'll close the collection. All white or all black with that. I don't know what happened. Pauline went over to the table and said, Would you please join us? Are you dining alone? And she did. They were introduced and they became the great three friends together, and Beverly became the mistress of the Baron Philippe de Hostia. When Pauline died in the lobby of the hotel in 1976, wearing a canary yellow, Balenciaga, Satin Duchess, de Chaville, and over parrot green, capri satin pants. He always made weird ensembles for her to take walks on the beach. Oh my god. So Pauline dies in the lobby. They have to bring her back. She's buried in Mouton. But also Beverly lived at Mouton for a bit, and she had her own private apartment in Paris. So when Pauline passed away, when it dust settled, he said to Beverly, What would you like before I ship things back to Paris? And she said, I'd love the bed, a sable coat, a pair of espadrills that Pauline took a walk with every morning on the beach, blue and white. And do you know who Mitch Owens is? Mitch has been spending 20 years writing the definitive Pauline book. Do you know this? I know that he's working on it. And he asked me to write the four to the book. So I gave him the Pauline Espidrills. And I said, to inspire you. So he has the Espidrils. Wow. And so Pauline dies. The Baron dies. Beverly has a great life. Beverly passes away. We're friends. Beverly leaves the bed to me in her will. And then, as you mentioned, the day that it was hoisted up from the terrace to the penthouse, I hid because it could have crashed, killed someone, gone through a window. It was so scary.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

And is that because why did it have to be hoisted up? Because it was just You couldn't fit it into the freight. And just even apart. It just would it didn't disassemble in such a way that you could get it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

And then you know that great company, Hansen.

SPEAKER_03 27:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

They made the mattress for it insane. The best mattress I've ever had in my life. And that had to be hoisted. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

And how was spending the first night in the bed?

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Hypnotic. Huh. I spoke to Polly. And she passed on. She is no longer on this plane. I in my meditation and prayers, I talked to Andre Leontarley, I talked to Elsa, I talked to the woman who discovered me, Eve Orton, recently Valentino, Halston, Givenchy, James Galanos. I talked to these people. They still advise my dad. But Pauline's not here. Can you imagine with everything we talked about tonight, if Pauline had one life? Maybe she was complete. Maybe that's another title for the podcast. Pauline only had one life.

SPEAKER_03 28:04

Yeah. I'm loving this. It's so wild to see the bed because it's funny, I've spent quite a lot of time looking at that bed in these grainy horse photos and just really trying to figure out what is going on with it. And then also there's an added mystery to it because the photos, as you said, the room that the bed was originally in was quite small. And you can tell this because there isn't a photo that captures the entire bed. Of all, you know, six photos that exist that have a piece of the bed, it's always a corner or the end or something, because you can tell he couldn't get far enough away from the bed to just capture the bed. It's sort of like a garbo kind of effect. There are no photos of it that really show it in all of its amazingness.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

Do you also speak to uh Say Twombli? No, interesting. Never. But you you admire him.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

My favorite artist besides the Netherland Renaissance. That's number one. Number two, Italian Renaissance, but not everybody. And then Saitwombly. And I don't speak to him because I'm embarrassed, because so much of the feeling of my own paintings come from him, and I'm not an original yet in the artwork. I am in fashion, but not in the art. So it's like I'm not worthy. I wish I could have shown you I had so many Twamblies.

SPEAKER_03 29:30

Seven. So on a sort of lighter, or maybe it's also kind of dark, actually, in its own way. I was with Justin Vivian Bond. Oh, I love her. I worship. And I said that I was gonna interview you. And I was so excited. And then she said, he has everything in there. He has Houston's coke spoon.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Oh, I'm gonna show you.

SPEAKER_03 29:56

I was like, that is so amazing. Because to me, I think that is kind of what is so captivating about your Instagram, is that it's sort of from Halston's Coke spoon to Paulina Rothschild's bed and back again. It's like such a good portrait of your brain. So can you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Sure, but I'll show it to you. I can't bring it here because it's in a plexi box. Yeah, we can't lift it up. It's on the table is in the hallway. Do you ever hear of Halston's lover, Victor Hugo, insane, crazy Victor Hugo? He came from Puerto Rico. He immediately he considered himself an artist, specifically a dadaist, like Marcel Duchamp, and he immediately signed up with a male escort service. Okay. Halston called for mail tricks all the time. And he called the service. Victor knocked on the door one night, never left. I have two pieces of art from Victor. And the first major thing he did was he took a very British sterling soup spoon and he made a plexiglass heel. And he let rested the top of the spoon on the heel, and he called it the Chanel Heel sculpture. He made one for Halston. Halston made Liza Minelli buy one. Elizabeth Taylor bought one. Now all of the spoons that were sandwiched in the Lucite heel, they were the plain Sterling soup spoon, typical English soup spoon. And he made one for Bill and Nancy Dugan. Bill Dugan was Halston's right arm for 20 years. Nancy was a Warhol actress and model and so on. And this is the one that I have. Since it's Chanel number five, Victor took five dollar bills. They would roll and do the cocaine. And the group was Elsa, Halston, Joe Eula, and Victor. And that's why this is so special because it's the cocaine Chanel heel. Amazing.

SPEAKER_03 32:03

Can I take a photo of that?

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Yeah. What other objects do you know you will own at some point? Like the bed that you already know you may own.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

It's really interesting because I'm thinking about my next home. I want to move on the water. I already see. I know the building I want. And I want everything in vanilla. Vanilla lacquer, but I want velvet gaufrage. I want the floors to be very comfortable. I don't want Francis Bacon back. I had him. Nor do I want Saitoambly. I had him. I'm going to live with two of my own paintings that are majestic called the Reconciliation Elegies. And they're in storage. I'm never selling them. I think I'm going to have some burial artifacts. I think I'm going to have I've been seeing this in my mind. Henry Moore, as you walk into the apartment, that's the only thing. I think there will be something from Pauline. Something incredible. This is a great question. I think it might be quite majestic to have something from Imperial China that's from a destroyed room. And also imagine a tapestry from your gallery on top of the long dining room table, not on the wall. And then I have three huge pareti bowls filled with something.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

It has to be the culmination of my life, because that will be the last home that I have. So I do want to experience the rest of my life after that, and you're going to do it. You are. You're the only one.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

Thank you. It's very generous of you to answer so honestly. Something so intimate. Do you know I was how looking forward to what I was today? Thank you. But Ralph, this has been amazing, and I thought we were gonna come and talk about collecting, but in fact it's about so much more in a way that very few people are either conscious of or willing to share, I think.

SPEAKER_03 34:03

Yeah, a really beautiful conversation. Thank you. So welcome.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

And send me all of your information.