Episode 51: Ronaldus Shamask
If you are interested in fashion, design, and cultural history, please check out my Substack newsletter, also called Sighs and Whispers, which covers many of the same themes as this podcast. You should sign up! All financial support for the newsletter allows me the time to write it, produce this podcast, and manage my Instagram, so please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Ronaldus Shamask walking the runway with his daughter, Arianne, after the Shamask s/s 2012 show.
Within fashion and fashion history, when you speak or write of “architectural fashion,” Shamask’s designs stand right at the top. In fact, after he debuted his first fashion collection in 1979, the clothes displayed such architectural form that many journalists assumed he had received architectural training. Instead, Dutch-born Shamask taught himself everything—with no formal studies in fashion or architecture, and no training as an artist.
Ronaldus Shamask was born in Amsterdam in late 1945, a city savaged by World War II. He grew up in the Netherlands before emigrating with his family to Australia at the age of 12. Shamask began working in a department store in Melbourne at 15, eventually working his way up to window dresser. He moved to London in the late 1960s, where he began working as a fashion illustrator. His completely self-taught style was perfectly in keeping with the psychedelic aesthetic of that moment, and he created illustrations for publications like The Times and The Observer, as well as for brands like Bata Shoes. In 1971, a close friend brought him to Buffalo, New York, where he became a theatrical designer for her avant-garde performance group, The Company of Man.
With each new role, Shamask acquired new skills and gained more confidence, all of which led to his entry into the fashion industry. After moving to New York City and taking on some interior design commissions, fashion seemed like the correct next step. With a marked minimalism and simplicity, Shamask eliminated all extraneous details, concentrating on the precision of cut, meticulous construction, and high-quality fabric to shape garments, where the only decoration came from the seams or zipper closures. His 1979 debut collection was described as “intellectually austere.” A profile from the November 1979 issue of GQ described his work thus:
Ronaldus Shamask with some of the designs from his first collection. Photo by John Bright for WWD, July 10, 1979.
“Still, all of Shamask’s work is beautiful, in the same authoritative, unsentimental way as a kimono or any garment that intimately belongs to a cultural tradition. This is why his clothes look so extraordinarily right at this time: They reflect our Western belief in the kind of progress that presents the future in contemporary terms. Shamask’s clothes are clearly of their time; yet, their fullness and confidence are of the future.”
Shamask designed his earlier works using blueprints and techniques he picked up in set design. With the help of master patternmakers, he developed new construction methods unlike those used by most fashion designers and manufacturers, including a Spiral Jacket cut from a single piece of fabric and featuring a continuously curving seam that mimics a lemon peel. Ron’s designs naturally appealed, and still appeal, to intellectual women, who flocked to the Upper East Side all-white boutique he opened with his first business partner, Murray Moss. Though he entered the fashion industry as an outsider, Shamask soon found himself among its most celebrated. His designs became common features in the top fashion magazines, with the line wholesaled to the nation’s top stores. He added menswear to his oeuvre in the mid-1980s, which proved equally successful.
Designs from Shamask’s s/s 2012 collection, his return to NYFW after a decade. WWD, November 13, 2011.
In 1989, Murray Moss and Shamask ended their business relationship. While Shamask went on to sign a licensing agreement with Mitsukoshi USA and Barneys New York the following year, for much of the 1990s, he stepped back from the outward aspects of fashion, like runway shows and ad campaigns, before returning to NYFW in 1998. Throughout, he continued to produce beautiful clothes for his clients, whether creating made-to-order designs, producing small wholesale collections, or designing lines for Barneys, while also maintaining a sideline collaborating with some of the top choreographers of the age, costuming the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lucinda Childs. Marriage and a daughter provided a grounding counterpoint to the ups and downs of the fashion industry.
Whenever Shamask the brand has publicly reemerged, at New York Fashion Week in 2011 or a retrospective exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2012, there has been much fanfare, with everyone in the fashion industry gleeful at the return of a true master of artful minimalism. His designs are both highly collectible and very wearable, seeming to exist outside of trends or a particular fashion moment.
I first reached out to Ron in 2021, though I had been interested in speaking with him for at least a decade prior. It was so wonderful to finally meet with him and learn so much about his career and life. Our conversation covers all of this and more: his design approach and philosophy, his influences and collaborators, his other projects, and memories of the fashion world in the 1980s and 1990s.
Fashion illustrations done by Ronaldus Shamask during his time in London in the late 1960s:
Ronaldus Shamask’s Upper East Side triplex in a renovated late 19-century townhouse. Photos by Edward Hausner for the New York Times, July 12, 1979:
Shamask’s first two fashion collections, for a/w 1979 and s/s 1980, created in partnership with Moss:
Ronaldus Shamask and Murray Moss in Moss, the gallery-like store opened to showcase Shamask’s designs. All photos from 1979 and 1980:
Shamask spring/summer 1990 runway show:
Shamask spring/summer 2012 runway show:
Images from the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition, “Ronaldus Shamask: Form/Fashion/Reflection,” held Oct 6, 2012 – Mar 10, 2013:
