Rudi Gernreich

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Rudolf "Rudi" Gernreich (August 8, 1922-85), an Austrian-born American fashion designer whose avant-garde clothing collections are generally considered as the most innovative and fashionable fashion of the 1960s.

He purposefully used fashion design as a social statement to advance sexual freedom by making clothing that resembled the female body's natural shape, freeing them from high fashion's constraints. He was the first to use cutouts, vinyl, and plastic in clothes.

He created the first thong bathing suit, unisex clothing, and the first swimsuit without a built-in bra, the minimalist, soft, translucent No Bra, and the topless monokini.

He was a four-time winner of the Coty American Fashion Critics Award.

Basic Black: William Claxton w/Peggy Moffitt (1966) was the first fashion film produced by the artist.

He had a long, varied, and trend-setting career in fashion design. He was a founding member and generous contributor of the Mattachine Society's early days.

He intentionally pushed the boundaries of acceptable fashion and used his collections to debate social issues and broaden society's image of what was acceptable.

Early years

Gernreich was the only child of Siegmund Gernreich and Elisabeth (née Müller) Gernreich, a Jewish couple who lived in Vienna, Austria. His father was a stocking company who was active in World War I and who died by suicide when Gernreich was eight years old.

Gernreich learned about high fashion from Hedwig Müller, who owned a dress shop with her husband Oskar Jellinek. He spent many hours in his aunt's store sketching her ideas for Viennese high society and learning about fabrics. He had also early sexual experiences. Leon Bing, one of his favorite photographers, told me about pictures of "leather chaps with a strap running between street workers' buttocks and women's thighs above gartered black stockings." When he was 12, Austrian designer Ladislaus Zcettel saw his sketches and offered Gernreich a fashion apprenticeship in London, but his mother refused because her son was too young to leave home.

Hitler banned nudity following the German Anschluss (when Nazi Germany annexed Austria) on March 12, 1938. Citizens of Austria were proponents of nude exercise, a total denial of the modern world. Rudi, a 16-year-old Rudi, and his mother fled to the United States as Jewish refugees, settling in Los Angeles, California. Rudi sold door to door to his mother, who sold pastries from him. In the morgue of Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, his first job was washing bodies to prepare them for autopsy. "I grew up overnight," he told Marylou Luther. When people tell me that my clothes are so body conscious [that] I do smile [that] I must have studied anatomy. "You bet I studied anatomy." He studied art and apprenticed for a Seventh Avenue clothing manufacturer at Los Angeles City College. He attended Los Angeles City College from 1938 to 1941, as well as the Los Angeles Art Center School from 1941 to 1942.

Personal life

In 1943, Gernreich became a citizen of the United States. Harry Hay, a Los Angeles-based communist and gay rights activist, and the two became engaged in July 1950. Gernreich received the Call, a statement outlining his gay advocacy group, and Gernreich told him, "You know that I'm an Austrian immigrant." This is the most frightening thing I've ever read. And, yes, I'm with you 100%." Gernreich was arrested and convicted in a police homosexual entrapment lawsuit in 1951, which was widespread in Southern California at the time.

Gernreich, a founder and a vocal financier supporter of the Mattachine Society, but secretly prefers to be identified by the initial "R" rather than by name. In 1952, Gernreich severed his friendship with Hay.

Gernreich first met Oreste Pucciani, future chairman of the UCLA French department, who was a leading figure in bringing Jean-Paul Sartre to the attention of American educators in 1953. Oreste Pucciani was also a pivotal figure in the gay rights movement. The two men kept their personal information private, while Gernreich felt that public knowledge of his homosexuality would negatively impact his fashion industry.

Gernreich never revealed his sexual orientation. "He just thought his sexuality was obvious," Moffit said. Gernreich wore a toupee, Gucci loafers, and jumpsuits with industrial zippers, and then rode a white Bentley around West Hollywood, where he lived with Pucciani until his death. Gernreich was diagnosed with lung cancer in January 1985 and died on April 21, 1985 at the age of 62. Oreste Pucciani, Gernreich's partner for 31 years, established a trust for the American Civil Liberties Union in 1988.

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Career

He worked in Hollywood costume design for a short time but then resent it. He was both a dancer and designer with Lester Horton's contemporary dance company in 1942. "I never was a good dancer," Gernreich said. I wanted to be a choreographer but that never happened." Gernreich said that dancing made him "aware of what clothes did to the rest of the body." He also built websites but in 1948, he left Lester Horton and became a fabric salesman for Hoffman Company. Gernreich branched out of fabric design to fashion design.

Designers in Paris ruled the fashion climate at that time. He briefly worked at George Carmel in 1949 but didn't like the job because he was under pressure to imitate Parisian fashion. "Everyone with a degree of intelligence was rewarded by a sense of high taste and unquestionable loyalty to Paris," Gernreich said. Dior, Fath, Balenciaga were kings — kings. You could not deviate from their appearance."

Gernreich started with Morris Nagel to create for Versatogs in 1951, but Nagel ordered Gernreich to adhere to the Versatogs design style, which Gernreich detests.

He began designing his own line of clothing in Los Angeles and New York until 1951, when fellow Viennese immigrant Walter Bass in Beverly Hills compelled him to commit to a seven-year deal with him. William Bass Inc. created a series of dresses for sale to Jack Hanson, the owner of Jax, a young Los Angeles boutique that concentrated on avant-garde clothing that was fun and adventurous. He also made costumes for Lester Horton until 1952. He worked with Renée Firestone, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor and immigrant, in Los Angeles, for the majority of the 1950s, before starting her own business in 1960.

He started designing swimwear for Westwood Knitting Mills in Los Angeles in 1955. In 1959, they recruited him as the swimwear designer. In 1959, Genesco Corporation employed him as a shoe designer. In 1960, he began his firm G.R. after he ended his seven-year tenure with Walter Bass and founded his company. Los Angeles based designs. In 1964, Rudi Gernreich Inc. took over the company's name. His designs were featured in What is generally considered to be the first fashion film, Basic Black: William Claxton w/Peggy Moffitt in 1966.

Gernreich began a Seventh Avenue showroom in New York City in the early 1960s, displaying his most popular designs for Harmon knitwear and his own more expensive line of experimental clothing. Gernreich wanted his designs to be affordable, but he broke American fashion's unwritten rule that name designers don't sell to chain stores in 1966. He took the unprecedented step of completing a deal with Montgomery Ward, a chain store, on January 3, 1966. Rudi's fashions were extremely popular and lasted for several seasons, proving that the original idea would sell at good rates.

He designed the Moonbase Alpha uniforms worn by the main characters of the 1970s British science-fiction television series Space: 1999, pushing the boundaries of the futuristic look in clothing over the course of three decades.

Gernreich was largely against sexualisation of the human body and the suggestion that the body was essentially shameful. Gernreich shared strong reservations about the sexualization of the human body in culture, and argued with religious and social beliefs that the body was ineffective. As he put it, he wanted to eliminate the stigma of a naked body and "cure our culture of its sex hang up." "To me, the only respect you can show to a woman is to make her a human being," Gerneich said. "A completely free woman who is emancipated."

Gernreich came at fashion as a social commentary. "I realized you could say things with clothes," he said. For the forthcoming issue, editors of Life magazine asked him to imagine clothing in the future, and he created minimalist, unisex clothing that could be worn by both men and women. He said he wanted to create a "utility principle" that would "take our minds off how we look and focus on really important topics." Marylou Luther, a fashion writer who became a good friend of Gernreich, wrote that he had two motivations in his designs: one was to produce modern fashion "for the twentieth century and beyond," the other was as "a social critic who just happens to work in the medium of clothes." Gernreich pushed his sociopolitical convictions forward by his designs.

He was compared to these same fashion companies, Balenciaga, Dior, and André Courrèges, but he continued to refuse to display his designs in Paris throughout his career, but he steadfastly refused to show his designs in Paris. Claire McCardell, rather than Stephen McCardell, was given the opportunity to rule. Gernreich became known as an avant-garde designer who broke many design rules. Gernreich, a former dancer, was determined to free the body from clothing's bounds. He invented the first swimsuit without a built-in bra in 1952 while designing for Westwood. At the time, the majority of swimsuits had a hard inner wall with boned linings. His designs featured elasticized wool knits that clung to the woman's body.

"He has turned the dancer's leotard into a swimsuit that liberates the body," Sports Illustrated's December 1962 issue stated. He's cut out the boning and wiring that made American swimsuits seagoing corsets." He was known as the designer who liberated women from the confines of high fashion by designing vibrant, young, "often daring clothing that mimics the female body's natural form."

Gernreich is regarded by some as one of the twentieth century's most innovative and flexible fashion designers. He invented the first topless swimsuit, which he described as the "monokini" in 1964. In December 1967, Gernreich was featured on Time's cover with models Peggy Moffitt and Leon Bing. "The most way-out, far-ahead designer in the United States," the magazine referred to him as "the most way-out, far-ahead designer in the United States."

"Rudi was one of the most influential and visionary American fashion designers of the 21st century," Cynthia Amnéus, Chief Curator and Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio, said. "Rudi was one of the most influential and visionary American fashion designers of the twentieth century," Rudi was doing, like taking all of the body out of swimwear and designing a trapeze dress in the 1950s decades before Yves Saint Laurent did."

During three decades, Pepett, model Pepeitt, and photographer William Claxton worked closely with model Peppy Moffitt and her partner and photographer William Claxton, pushing the boundaries of the "modern look" in clothing. His work combined minimalist styles with vibrant, psychedelic colors, and strong geometric patterns, pushing the boundaries of modern women's clothing. With avant-garde makeovers and haircuts, Moffitt's designs gained notoriety.

He was the sixth American designer to be inducted into the Coty American Fashion Hall of Fame. He designed the first see-through chiffon blouse, produced leotards and tights, with zippers and dog leash clasps, and introduced the concept of unisex clothing in 1970, including men's suits and hats for women. He displayed his sketches on a male and female model who were both shaven. He curated coordinated collections of dresses, handbags, hats, and stockings. He was one of the first to use vinyl and plastic in clothing, used cut-out details, and created the first soft, clear bra.

He created and introduced the first thong bathing suit that revealed the buttocks for both men and women in 1974, in reaction to Los Angeles' banning nude beaches. Gernreich invented the thong style but had to abandon enforcement of his rights due to legal difficulties. He created furniture for Fortress and Knoll International from 1970 to 1971, and in 1975, he created men's style underwear for Lily of France.

He worked on cosmetics for Redken and costumes for the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company, as well as kitchen accessories and ceramic bathroom accessories. Gernreich continued to work with Lewitzky, constructing sets and costumes for Pas de Bach in 1977, Rituals in 1980, and Confines in 1982, all danced by the WCK3.

Gernreich is best known for his engineering of the first topless swimsuit, which he referred to as the "Monokini." After Susanne Kirtland of Look called Gernreich and begged him to draw a suit to accompany a trend tale on futuristic lines, Gernreich invented the Monokini at the end of 1963. He first imagined the Monokini's topless swimsuit. The Monokini bottom was similar to a maillot swimsuit style but it came to a stop-torso and was backed by two straps across the breasts and around the neck.

When Claxton's photograph of his wife Peggy Moffitt modeling the model was published in Women's Wear Daily on June 4, 1964, it sparked a lot of controversy in the United States and other nations. Moffitt said the scheme was a logical extension of Gernreich's avant-garde design in swimwear design as well as a scandalous symbol of the permissive society. He saw the dive as a protest against repressive society. "Bosom will be discovered in five years," he said. He saw the baring of a woman's breasts as a form of liberty.

He didn't intend to create the style commercially, but Kirtland of Look encouraged him to make it available to the public. "I was afraid we'd sell only six or seven items, but I decided to make it anyway." The Monokini "was a political statement," Moffitt said later. It wasn't meant to be worn in public."

In a interview in January, 1965, he told Gloria Steinem that despite the criticism, he'd do it again.

He later created the "pubikini" — a bikini bottom with a window that revealed the model's dyed and shaped pubic hair.

Gernreich liked that his designs be worn braless, and Gernreich introduced the "No Bra" in October 1964, the brassiere manufacturer Exquisite Form. The bra was made of sheer fabric with no underwires or lining of any kind. Unlike modern bras, his style encouraged breasts to re-create their natural shape rather than being mold into a stylistic model.

It was a soft-cup, light-weight, seamless, sheer nylon tricot, and elastic bra that was exclusive to small-breasted women. It came in three sheer colors: powder puff, black, and white, as well as sizes 32 to 36, A and B cups. It had a single hook in the back.

The No Bra was a major departure from the previous decade's sculpted, bullet-shaped bosoms. It looked very similar to the 1920s bra, as well as Mary Phelps Jacob's first modern bra, with two handkerchiefs attached to a band and tied around the chest. Gernreich's no-brainery was less than half of what it was. Both the 1920s and 1960s celebrated the stick-like figure of adolescence, but with that came small, flat breasts.

His minimalist bra revolutionized brassiere styling, sparking a movement toward more organic shapes and soft, sheer fabrics.

The No Bra's sales success was duplicated in 1965 when it was introduced, a "no-side" bra, to cover dresses with deep armholes. It had a narrow stretch band around the torso, allowing women to wear open-sleeved clothing without revealing a bra band. The sheer cups were stripped from the bias and part of the half-bias. He also created a "No Front" maillot design with a deep, plunging front, as well as a "No Back" long-line version with contoured stretch-waist fabric that allowed a woman to wear a backless gown.

Rudi presented his fashion at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York in 1967, entitled "Two Modern Artists of Dress: Elizabeth Hawes and Rudi Gernreich." In 2000, a retrospective titled "Fashion Will Go Out of Fashion" was assembled in Kunstlerhaus Graz, Austria. A retrospective of his work at the Phoenix Art Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2003, hailed him as one of the country's most influential, prophetic, and conflictual American designers of the 1950s to the 1970s. Fearless Fashion: Rudi Gernreich, a major exhibition focusing Gernreich's life and work, opened in Los Angeles in 2019.

In 1956, Gernreich received his first design award from Sports Illustrated, a junior honor. He was given the American Sportswear Design Award for his creation of a black-and-white check wool jersey tank suit with no built-in bra. In 1960, he received the Wool Knit Association prize. Gernreich received two major awards in 1963: he received the Coty American Fashion Critics Award in May and the Coty American Fashion Critics Award in June. When Norman Norell, the first winner of the award, returned his Coty Award as a protest against Gernreich's acknowledge, it reignited controversy. "It no longer means a thing to me," Norell told Women's Wear Daily, "It no longer means a thing to me." I can't bear to look at it any more. I saw a photograph of a suit of Rudi's and one lapel of the jacket was shawl, and the other was notched—well! The vote was blamed on "jury members from Glamour and Seventeen" who are "unconscious of high fashion collections" by the Gernreich. The Bonwit Teller department store ran a half-page ad with the headline: "We'd give you the Coty Award all over again." He received the award in 1963, 1966, and 1967.

The Neiman Marcus award, 1961, was given to Dallas, 1963; the Sporting Look Award, 1963; and the International Fashion Award, Boston, 1965; and the Council of Fashion Designers of America Special Tribute, 1985. "To the majority of the fashion industry, he was considered the most innovative designer of these days," Marylou Luther, the Los Angeles Times fashion reporter, wrote.

In 1985, Tom Bradley, the Mayor of Los Angeles, declared August 13 as 'Rudi Gernreich Day' in honor of Gernreich's contribution to fashion and Los Angeles, adding, "His designs were social commentary and forecast on our times and the future lives of our nation."

Time magazine selected him to its list of the "All-TIME 100 Fashion Icons" on April 2, 2012. Along Seventh Avenue in New York in 2000, the city of New York unveiled bronze plaques commemorating American fashion designers, including Gernreich.

Gernreich devoted himself to gourmet soups in his later years. He is known for a dish for red pepper soup, a cold soup served in red pepper cases, and garnished with caviar and lemon.

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