Rudi Gernreich

I was born an only child on August 8, 1922 in Vienna, Austria to Siegmund and Elisabeth Gernreich. My father had been a hosiery manufacturer who died when I was only seven. In September of 1938, as Jewish refugees during World War II, my mother and I immigrated to Los Angeles, California. I enrolled in classes at Los Angeles Community College and the Los Angeles Art Center where I studied design and dance. In 1942, I had various employments as a costume designer, art director, and a hospital orderly. My first significant employment as a designer was for Walter Bass, a sportswear manufacturer. This is where I designed my first bra-free swimsuit. In those days, all swimsuits had built in stiff cups that were formed into an unnatural bullet form that breasts were compressed into. I had won my first honor in 1956 from Sports Illustrated, the Sporting Look Award. Sports Illustrated would later become the infamous for it’s Swimsuit editions which I had the honor of participating in several times. I then won the coveted Coty American Fashion Critics award for a ladies suit with one notched collar and on shawl collar, which was considered outrageous at the time. Later I would do an interview with Sports Illustrated in 1962, that would change my life and fashion history. I predicted, “American women will soon wear suits without tops.” June 3rd, 1964 The day fashion stood still, I unveiled the monokini bathing suit. I asked friend and model Peggy Moffitt, if she would pose in the suit. After much deliberation and demands, she agreed to model the suit but only in a photograph to be taken by her husband, William Claxton. In a 1987 interview she talked about the topless bathing suit, “ It was the single most important fashion thing that has happened in this century and it had many more repercussions than just fashion.” After the release of the suit, the media went crazy; I would spend most of the day on the phone with interviewers calling me everything from a demon to a prophet. There were letters of thanks for liberating women’s fashions, but also death threats. The Vatican and Kremlin both denounced the suit as “immoral.” I was shocked to hear that women were arrested if they wore the topless suit in public. I had never intended on manufacturing the suit, but there was much pressure from the manufacturing company to make it. I was afraid that now I have said it, if I don’t make it, then someone else will so,… 3,000 were made. The Topless Bathing suit was meant only to be a fashion statement, about freedom, comfort, a prediction of the future. When interviewed by Chicago Today, I told them “You should forget what you are wearing and enjoy yourself. Most women are too serious about their clothes.” Along with freedom and comfort, I believe in moderate prices, even though I am considered “couture“. My clothes seem to shock the public although that is not my intention as to shake tradition and spin off into the space age. I believe that "Haute Couture" is having a quick death because it doesn't belong in modern life. Designers aren't inventing clothes anymore. They're taking their lead from life and how people, particularly the young, are living it. I believe in a throwaway look. Clothes must have a sense of humor, and that's why they can't be expensive. I spearheaded what is called “The Total Look” where everything including the coat, dress, gloves, shoes, pantyhose, right down to the underwear, would all match. Layne Nielson, my best friend and accessory designer, summed it up best in Vanity Fair; “Rudi’s is the source of most of what people are wearing today.” For this collection I was awarded another Coty award making 1967 a very prosperous year for me. Photographer William Claxon, made a seven-minute fashion video titled Basic Black that featured three of my best models, Leon Bing, Ellen Harth, and Peggy Moffitt, wearing the collection set to music. Basic Black won many awards and is considered to be the forerunner of fashion videos so widely used today. 1967 is also the year that I was inducted into the Fashion Hall of Fame by the Coty American fashion critics, the highest award of that time. I was elated. By the end of the ‘60s, some of my collective designs included a line of pantyhose, lingerie, and scarves. I am accredited to be the first to use of vinyl in garments; First See thru clothing; First designer jeans; The first to design men’s underwear for women; and start androgyny; i.e., men’s suits, hats, ties on women. I also invented the first soft un-constructed bras, and the Thong. At the 1970 Japanese Expo, I revealed unveiled the Unisex Look and would again shock the world with my vision of the future. In the New York Post, 1970, I said that “it’s inevitable that men’s and women’s clothes will become alike. I believe the similarity will make their anatomical and spiritual differences more evident.” You can see this everywhere today with men’s and women wearing the same types of blue jeans, t-shirts, and tennis shoes. In 1971, I presented one of my most controversial collections, inspired by the Kent State college shootings in Austin, Texas; which was equal to what happened at Columbine. I wanted to make a social statement with clothing so I designed Military styled couture clothing with my models wearing real dog tags and toting m57’s, calling it my “back to school collection.” This is one prediction that which has made me very unhappy because it has come true too often. I have mainly designed women’s clothing but also made children’s wear, shoes, fragrances, designed all the costumes for the Space 1999 series, quilts for Knoll International, and gourmet soups. By ‘85 I designed my last fashion statement, the Pubikini. The Pubikini was basically a thong but with an exaggerated lower front exposing the pubic hair which I died poison green, it would be my last act of fashion defiance before succumbing to lung cancer on August 21, 1985.