Peggy Moffitt, the 1960s Model and Muse Whose Distinctive Five-Point Haircut Became Emblematic of the Era, Has Died at 87
BY
LAIA GARCIA-FURTADO
August 13, 2024
Peggy Moffitt—the model who in the 1960s became a symbol of the decade’s freedom and experimentation with her signature look and collaborations with the avant-garde designer Rudi Gernreich—has died at 87. The news was
confirmed by Moffitt’s son, Christopher Claxton, to WWD on Tuesday morning.
Born Margaret Ann Moffitt on May 14, 1940, in Los Angeles, Moffitt originally wanted to be a dancer. “I studied ballet,” she explained in a
2016 interview. “I have always been interested in movement more than the old-fashioned thing of having to fit yourself into somebody’s preconceived form rather than have your body be the form.” In the 1950s, she moved to New York to pursue the two-year acting program at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where her teachers included Martha Graham, Sanford Meisner, and Sydney Pollack. She returned to Los Angeles but was disappointed to only land bit parts in movies—or, as she described it in a
1993 interviewwith the
Los Angeles Times, “the 10th in a line of squaws standing by a tepee.”
In 1959, she married William Claxton, a photographer known for his portraits of famous jazz musicians and Hollywood celebrities. While Moffitt had always had an interest in fashion—she worked at the famous Jax boutique in Los Angeles while in high school—she was introduced to the world of fashion photography through her husband. “It had a little chic,” she recalled.
When Moffitt was 22, she met Gernreich, who hired her to be a model for his junior line. “He was using big-boned country-club types and thought I was too young for his clothes,” she explained, but the two became friends, and Moffitt became an integral part of Gernreich’s creative process. “He once said to me, ‘You inspire me when I don’t want to be inspired,’” she told
WWD in 2016. Moffitt’s husband soon joined their creative cocoon, and in 1964 they shook the world with a simple black-and-white photograph of Gernreich’s famous monokini, a maillot that exposed the wearer’s breasts. When Gernreich first showed her the design, the model reportedly asked, “Who are you going to get to model that?” (To which he responded, “You!”)
It took Moffitt two months to understand Gernreich’s vision of freedom and femininity, and when she eventually posed for the photo, it was under a set of conditions of her own making; she would only do it with her husband behind the lens, and she would get to decide where the picture ran. “Not
Playboy—not
Esquire,” Moffitt explained in a
2001 interview. “I didn’t want to be exploited.” When the photo was eventually published, it created a shift in society, going so far as to be denounced by the Vatican. But one person who immediately embraced it was Diana Vreeland, who requested to see the swimsuit on Moffitt in person. At the
Vogue offices, the model wore a kimono and performed a kind of dance in front of the editor. (continued on Vogue.com)
