1922-1985 Rudi Gernreich

[SomethingElse]

Brown herring-bone knit swimming costume, 1960s, `labelled Rudi Gernreich, design for Harmon Knitwear, size 8', four buttons to the V-necked front, complete with tie belt.

kerrytaylorauctions.com

 

[SomethingElse]

All from the 1970s for Harmon Knits.

ritchies.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Velvet Mini Dress, Late 1960s.

whitakerauction.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Op-Art Dress, 1960s.

whitakerauction.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Above: Little Ms. Moffitt: Peggy Moffitt models Gernreich’s creations in 1968 and 1965.

Q&A: Peggy Moffitt

Like Twiggy’s figure and Cindy’s mole, Peggy Moffitt’s cropped bangs, pernicious smirk and harrowing eyelashes are part of Fashion’s Lexicon of Looks. More than mere model or muse, Peggy Moffitt was/is a collaborator; an equal in the androgynous aesthetic of Rudi Gernreich. Together they made functional, affordable fashion move, literally and figuratively, in ways that joined the sexes; ignoring gender while highlighting sexuality. Moffitt’s husband William Claxton — one of the finest photographers of the last 40 years — joined the duo to complete fashion’s unholy trio. I caught up with Moffitt in her Los Angeles home before her trip to Philadelphia for the opening of the Gernreich retrospective "Fashion Will Go Out of Fashion" at ICA.

CP: History calls you as muse. I see you as an equal. When did you realize the importance of your role within the collaboration?

PM: We were collaborators — thank you for saying so — but not in a typical way. We were kindred spirits. It’s amazing we met at all. I mean, what is the likelihood, when each person is as unique independently as we were, of meeting your lost chord? We both had met thousands of people. We both worked and got along with thousands of people. But we connected. I felt that the moment we started working together as one, not counting when I was a gun for hire amongst nine other girls. When he started fitting samples on me. 1962.

CP: Since you’re so associated with his clothes, were you possessive? What did you think of those models who came before you? What was his work saying that they could not have understood?

PM: They were a distant cousin. But they were the models everybody used. They had the look: upper class, patrician, station wagons, Wonder Bread kids. American elegant. They had to be missing something. Primarily his wit. No one, not models, not editors, got his wit, his European, slightly naughty humor.

CP: I gather you don’t think much of designers, like say Gaultier, who took what Rudi wrought and made it jokey?

PM: To me, putting a cone bra through a pinstripe suit with slits in it so that the bra pops through is a joke on a woman. "Ha ha" on you, lady. That’s not witty. In general, I don’t see models responding to clothes at all. Now, of course, not all clothes have subtext. And not all designers — like Rudi — would give his model a script in which I could play characters. That’s the fun of clothes. I was trained as an actress, dancer and in theatrical arts. I understood lighting and design. I could find characters in his script. I never held back. It was the height of freedom and liberation.

CP: Were you always as confident as you looked in some of those photos? You seem as defiant and haughty as his clothes.

PM: I never thought or think myself as a beautiful woman. Models always seemed to be "selling" themselves and quite at ease with it. But modeling was cornier back then. Now it’s all t*ts and ***. … So I used whatever I could — my movement, my talent — to take my mind off of whether I was pretty or whether I was selling myself.

CP: The work you did together was never exploitative of human form, of feminine attributes, or of the fact that he was gay. How is it that you both kept if from being so?

PM: The whole topless thing could’ve been a disaster. I didn’t want to do it when he asked me. I am a puritanical descendent of the Mayflower. I carried that goddamned Plymouth Rock on my back. … When I did give in, I did so with a lot of rules. I would not show myself on the runway that way. I’d do it only with Bill. Since Rudi would never ever have enough money to do this, I did it for free. But I had final say on everywhere it went photographically. Not Playboy. Not Esquire. I didn’t want to be exploited. Not ever. In fact I made quite a scene when in Los Angeles, several years back, the curators of a Rudi exhibit wanted to make another woman go topless in the monokini he had designed for me. I protested because that’s equally exploitative. It wasn’t just about me. It’s about women. I think Rudi and I kept from being exploitative — a real precedent then — because I cared how you do a thing rather than what you do. Everyone was outraged anyway. But at least we did it with, excuse the word, class.

citypaper.net

 

[SomethingElse]

Rudi to Wear - A retrospective of legendary fashion designer Rudi Gernreich makes its only U.S. stop at ICA.

Rouse yourself, Weintraub! The miniskirt is back!" exults a park bench geezer to his companion in a recent Booth New Yorker cartoon. The object of his pop-eyed gaze wears a Rudi Gernreichian outfit consisting of two narrow bands of patterned fabric.

I wonder if Gernreich (1922-1985) would have appropriated this gem for his scrapbooks. Selected reproductions of the Los Angeles designer’s clippings, with headlines like "Bare Bosoms" and "Rudi macht dich frei!" (Rudi makes you free!), paper the high walls and floor of the ICA’s tribute, "Fashion Will Go Out of Fashion," an exhibition that is simultaneously sociology lesson and itself a work of art.

Rudi! rudi! Gernreich poses with his model and muse, Peggy Moffitt, in 1968.

Nearly a half-century after the inventor of "unisex" fashion used mass-market style to skewer couture elitism and ladylike "good taste," his miniskirt again arouses controversy and lust on the streets and in the news media. Its reappraisal is ripe for the art gallery. Originating at Künstlerhaus Graz in Gernreich’s native Vienna, the elaborately staged show has its only U.S. showing here. It speaks to several leading issues in the contemporary context.

First, consider the vogue for clothing design in high-art venues. Responding to recent shows like the Guggenheim’s Armani and the Metropolitan Museum’s "Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years," Roberta Smith, in The New York Times last year, questions the validity of "exhibitions that look like upscale stores, or exhibitions that look like historical society displays." She goes on to suggest bitterly that, "since a majority of Americans don’t like art, the logic seems to run, it must be the museum’s job to give them something else," adding that such exhibitions revamp the cliché: "I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like to wear."

Given that "Fashion Will Go" is better produced and considerably more intelligent than the embarrassing Armani self-congratulation, it does seem to be more about social history than art, and its sponsorship is linked to the upscale retail store Joseph Magnin. Nevertheless, curator Brigitte Felderer’s nicely reasoned catalog essay makes a convincing case for Gernreich as the instigator of a dynamic new aesthetic that infiltrated and molded attitudes toward art and the self in the 1960s and ’70s. Gernreich was, she says, more an "artist of the avant-garde than…a fashion designer."

Gernreich’s clothes embody the aspirations and contradictions of his day, especially regarding the role of women as increasingly independent individuals. His knitted fabrics and daringly skimpy cuts emphasized the uniqueness of the individual human body and its movements. Many are reminiscent of a dancer’s practice clothes, not surprising for a designer who worked as a professional dancer and designed his first costumes for dance.

In 1938 at the age of 16, Gernreich and his mother arrived in Los Angeles, Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi oppression. A poor student, Gernreich fell in love with modern dance while working as an usher at a Martha Graham performance. He joined the Lester Horton company in 1942. Gernreich’s first real design success came with bold Pop Art-related fabric patterns and color combinations he created for Hoffman California Fabrics.

Moffitt models Gernreich’s famed monokini in 1964

If today we are blasé about clinging, stretchy fabrics, it’s largely because Gernreich showed us how to wear them, though he probably never imagined that a thong, one of his inventions, would provoke historic shenanigans in the Oval Office. Gernreich designs tend to be reductive. "I consider designing today more a matter of editing than designing," he said in 1972. His favorite models, Peggy Moffitt, who will attend the opening reception (see interview), and Léon Bing were not muscular, but lithe and devoid of fat, while Carol Doda, famous solely for the magnitude of her enlarged breasts, also posed in a Gernreich monokini.

That one-piece topless bathing suit intended to be worn by men or women who had shaved off all head and body hair was the centerpiece of Gernreich’s famous UNISEX Project. Felderer points out that photographs of models wearing this costume tend to preserve gender roles through pose (for example, man standing, woman at his feet) and to eroticize the breast. Felderer claims that Gernreich postulated a "new interpretation" of the breast.

Androgyny is not asexuality. It often has a quality of intentional eroticism. By suggesting that gender taboos were arbitrary, Gernreich’s UNISEX Project implicitly challenged basic social assumptions. It may reflect his amused critique of a rigidly heterosexual society. Although in 1950 he was one of seven founders of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations, Gernreich was never open about his homosexuality. He called his UNISEX clothing "an anonymous sort of uniform of an indefinite revolutionary cast."

Visitors to the ICA will quickly realize that although Gernreich is the subject — and more than 125 examples of his clothing are displayed on elegant attenuated Schläppi mannequins — the exhibition design trumps the fashions. ICA preparator Clint Takeda has effectively translated the celebratory environment created by Viennese architectural firm Coop Himmelb(l)au for the show’s first venue.

Toy airplanes circling overhead reinforce Gernreich’s love of technology. A blue room with reflective water elements frames 20 daring swimsuits. A twisting "Media Tower" presents videos of Gernreich walking and talking about his work. Perhaps the most ambitious piece is a "Virtual Catwalk" video projection by media artist Daniel Egg. In this multi-element installation, reflected projections almost assume the reality of actual models posing and being photographed.

By organizing this show, Neue Galerie seems to claim Gernreich as a native son of Vienna, though he spent all but the first 16 years of his life as an American citizen. His exaggerated simplicity might well be linked to Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte’s commitment to simple (sometimes) affordable design. But in his use of inexpensive industrial fabrics and new attitude toward the body, Gernreich is more of a provocateur even than the reform-minded Werkstätte.

Like his contemporary Andy Warhol, he constructed a media persona and promoted himself as a product, one which remains viable at the ICA today. Even Gernreich’s pronouncement, "Fashion will go out of fashion," embodies the contradictions he loved.

citypaper.net . published September 2001

 

[SomethingElse]

Animal print ensembles, 1966.

metmuseum.org

 

[SomethingElse]

Wool, c. 1970–71. This bikini of brown wool knit with black wool banded edges is an amalgamation of angles. The top is composed of four triangles with all edges traced by wide, flat strips of black knit. The bottom, also traced in black, has additional black bands attached at the low-slung waistline that criss-cross once around the midriff. With this collection, Gernreich pays homage to Georges Rouault (1871–1958), a French Expressionist painter known for bordering his images with thick black lines.

metmuseum.org

 

[SomethingElse]

I found a few more images from the "Fashion will go out of fashion" exhibit in the fall of 2000. Photographs by Paul Faure.

1970. UNISEX project, showing the models, Renèe Holt and Tom Broome, in the garments for the colder season, wool knit jumpsuits in either black or white

1970. UNISEX project, detail of the eyes which were covered by matching contact lenses.

neuegalerie.at

 

[SomethingElse]

Photo by Christa Zinner. ca. 1968. Model Peggy Moffitt with Rudi Gernreich in his house in the Hollywood Hills.

Courtesy J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency. 1970. Advertisement for Ronrico Rum.

neuegalerie.at

 

[SomethingElse]

Photograph by Neal Barr, 1966 for Harpers Bazaar, example of the "Total Look" animal print series, the clothes covered the whole body, all the accessories, like hat and gloves, but also underwear had the same giraffe pattern.

neuegalerie.at

 

[Alejandro]

rudi is just beyond amazing. i adore him.

 

[SomethingElse]

Gold lurex knit tank-style dress and jacket with belt tie. Early 1970s.

ritchies.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Gold lurex knit skirt, blouse, and jacket with tie at waist, made for Harmon Knits. Early 1970s.

ritchies.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Black and purple with stylized flowers, the vertically striped silk chiffon gown with wrap neckline. Early 1970s.

ritchies.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Minidress 1960 - 1969. Wool jersey.

artnet.com

 

[SomethingElse]

c. 1968

artnet.com

 

[SomethingElse]

c. 1965. Royal blue and black wool knit; smock form with long sleeves; yoke of check fabric; foldover collar of check fabric; center front opening, slightly to left of center front, with hidden zipper that extends into skirt; set-in sleeves of three fabrics-upper portion of check, then stripe with black background and lastly stripe with blue background; elastic at wrist; upper portion of skirt of stripe with black background and lower portion of skirt of stripe with blue background; foldover hem; unlined.
Background:

This dress was a gift from the designer. The mannequin was dressed with all correct accessories to show how it would have looked for the designer's 1965 collection. The stockings are of the same material as the dress. The dress and stockings would have retailed together for about $85. The black heeled Capezio shoes are original to the outfit. Exhibited in Suiting Everyone: The Democratization of Clothing in America from 1974 to 1979.

americanhistory.si.edu

 

[DosViolines]

Rudi Gernreich Black Rib Knit Wool Tunic Sweater
American, circa 1955
With crossover neckline of self ties draping to the back, labeled: Rudi Gernreich design for Walter Bass.

doylenewyork

 

[DosViolines]

Rudi Gernreich Orange and Yellow Wool Tweed Minidress
American, mid 1960s
With round, stand up collar, slash hip pockets and long sleeves, labeled: Rudi Gernreich; offered with a unique length of orange and yellow Hoffman Woolen Fabric, circa 1949, designed by Rudi Gernreich and fringed by him for the owner, no label.

doylenewyork