Cinzia Ruggeri trained in the applied arts at the Accademia delle Arti Applicate in Milan. She worked for a time as design director for her father's ready-to-wear company, Unimac SpA. In 1977 she began to produce her own collections. She was closely connected with the radical design scene in Milan in the late 1970s and was an associate of the group Memphis, though she had no formal relationship with them. This dress features a stepped ziggurat form along the collar and skirt. The ziggurat was a form which she used repeatedly in the mid-1980s. Ruggeri describes this as a personal symbol it was also a common motif in post-modern architecture and design of the 1980s.