1971, quilt made for Knoll International.
To Gernreich, it was also the year fashion died. Almost symbolically, Life magazine asked him to take it into the future. Editor Helen Blagden asked Gernreich to project what men and women would be wearing in 1980.
Again, as in the case of Look magazine and the topless bathing suit, Gernreich said no, that it was impossible to predict a visual reality without creating a Buck Rogers caricature. Swayed by the fact that Ufe's special year-end double issue, "Into the Seventies," was also to include speculations on the consequences of moon flight by Norman Mailer and a Louis Harris poll on the social coalitions that would shape the future, Gernreich agreed to do what he considered a somewhat realistic projection of clothes for tomorrow.
"If you go too far away from something plausible you lose just that-the plausibility of it. I really believe you can only see things in your own moment, that you're bound by your time. My ideas for Life were bound by the time, but I tried to take the limit off the time they were meant for by extending it to the year 2000."
Those ideas -- shaved bodies and everyone stripped down to their barest essentials --were synopsized by Life (January 1, 1970, special double issue): "According to him IGernreichl, the nostalgic and 'circusy' look of today's clothes is a sinister sign that we are not facing up to the problems of contemporary life. The clothes of the future will have to be functional. Gernreich foresees a time just ahead when 'people will stop bothering about romance in their clothes: Tomorrow's woman will divest herself of her jewelry and cosmetics and dress exactly like tomorrow's man. Fashion will go out of fashion. The 'utility principle' will allow us, says Gernreich, to take our minds off how we look and concentrate on really important matters. Clothing will not be identified as either male or female. So women will wear pants and men will wear skirts interchangeably. And since there won't be any squeamishness about nudity, see-through clothes will only be see-through for reasons of comfort. Weather permitting, both sexes will go about bare-chested, though women will wear simple protective pasties. The aesthetics of fashion are going to involve the body itself. We will train the body to grow beautifully rather than cover it to produce beauty."
For the elderly, Gernrelch predicted caftan-like coverups. "The present cult of eternal youth is not honest and certainly not attractive. In an era when the body will become the convention of fashion, the old will adopt a uniform of their own. If a body can , no longer be accentuated, it should be abstracted. The young won't wear prints but the elderly will because bold prints detract. The elderly will have a cult of their own and the embarrassment of old age will fade away."
1970, unisex. (photograph © Patricia Faure)
When the article appeared with sketches, Eugenia Butler, an art dealer acquainted with Gernreich, arranged a meeting with Maurice Tuchman, senior curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and head of the American art and technology section scheduled for Expo 70, a world's fair thAt tnnk nlace in Osaka, Japan, in 1970. Tuchman asked Gernreich to create a special event for Expo -- an art-in-fashion statement for artists and art press who would be attending the Japan exhibition. In explaining his decision to bring the drawings in Life to life, Gernreich recounted, "I was terribly upset with what was going on. Iwanted people to be disturbed. I felt a strong anti-statement was in order and that a drawing was vague and unreal. I believed that if I translated that drawing into clothes it would be real. It would have an impact. Most people saw the Ufe article as a violent antisex statement. A few thought it was IyricaI, that the unisex statement represented a peaceful getting together. Iwas curious to see how they would react to the real thing. "
He first asked Moffitt to be his model. She refused. "To me, it was perfectly legitimate to project a future thirty to fifty years hence, but then to actually present the nudes seemed questionable. If you're predicting the future and next week show it, it's no longer futuristic. I tried to tell him he would be attacked personally for showing people without hair while he was covering his baldness with a toupee, but I couldn't say it. He justified going ahead with the idea of bringing his sketches to life, but Icould not be a part of it."
After Leon Bing also begged off, Gernreich started his search for a young man and woman who would agree to shave their bodies and heads and accompany him to Expo 70. The woman was Renee Holt a twenty-two-yea....old model, and the man was thirty-year-old Tom Broome, manager of a Los Angeles boutique called Chequer West.
Time magazine chronicled the shaving event in its January 26, 1970 issue: "The first order of business was to shave the heads and bodies of his two models. 'Hair hides a lot: explained Gernreich, 'and body hair is too sexual. I don't want to confuse the idea of freedom with sexual nakedness. Openness and honesty call for no covering of any kind.'
For Thomas Broome, Rudi's male model, the prospect of allover alopecia held no horror: 'I've wanted to shed my hair for a long time. I have this theory that when I do, I will shed other things, too-maybe my inhibitions.' But Holt approached her barber's appointment with anxiety. Fondly caressing her long golden tresses, she said bravely, 'In a way, long hair is a crutch for a woman. Once the hair is short, one may develop other things like the intellect. But I have been thinking what my father will say.'
1970, unisex. (photograph © Patricia Faure)
An hour later, Tom and Renee emerged from under their barber's aprons and entered separate bathrooms to shave off every vestige of body hair. 'You look great, just great: gushed Rudi when they returned. Acosmeticianapplieda thincoatofflesh-colored makeup to their naked bodies, and it was time to Qet into their costumes, such as they were. Both models dressed identically in black-and-white monokinis, covered with white knit bell-bottom trousers and rib-length black-and-white tank tops. Then, while photographers snapped pictures and Gernreich gave cues and directions, the models rehearsed their act for the January 20 showings at both Eugenia Butler's Hancock Park home and, later, at her gallery. Off came the tank tops, Down dropped the trousers. The monokinis slid slowly to the floor. After stepping to one side, Tom and Renee stood silently like statuesor inmates of a concentration camp."
Gernreich's curiosity over how people would react to Tom and Renee turned into shock at the Butler event. While he was leading the models through the crowd-turned-circus, a man suddenly appeared, exposing his genitalia and carrying a mock version in the form of a yellow stuffed pillow. When Gernreich learned that the flasher was Paul Cotton, one of Mrs. Butler's artists, and that she had staged the entire spectacle, he asked her if it were true and she denied it. Later, when she was arrested along with an exposed Cotton while standing in line at the American Pavilion in Japan, Gernreich realized he'd been duped. And when Cotton repeated his performance by appearing totally nude, except for a body coating of silver paint, at the presentation at Tuchman's home near Kyoto, Gernreich realized that he'd been set up again.
Although Gernreich's clothes statements of the sixties drew press response the world over, his anti-statement of 1970 triggered fewer headlines. Women's Wear Daily covered the show in its Arts & Pleasures section. Much of the press was more interested in the failing hemlines of that time than fallen hair.
Los Angeles Times, January 22, 1970: "Rudi Gernreich's Projection 1970 is more philosophy than adamant statement on the future of fashion. It is, in fact, anti-fashion. Behind the shockery of completely hairl.ess bodies and nudity, Gernreich's projection is a sincere probing of what he believes the future may be and how it will affect our appearance."
Los Angeles Herald Examiner, January 21, 1970: "The proceedings were inexplicably joyless. When he was through, much more than clothes and body hair were missing. Gone also were imagination, so-called 'modesty' hangups, traditional male-female attitudes, not to mention the future profits of the world's fashion, fabric and dry-cleaning professions."
Fashion Week, January 26,1970: "Is 2001 any the less beautiful and awesome because Kubrick is not there? No. We are involved in the future. And it may be our salvation that somebody is serious about it."
Women's Wear Daily, January 22,1970: "Designer Gernreich has been on a sabbatical for some months now, recharging his creative batteries. It's a shame he went back to the drawing board too soon."
Gernreich summed up the reviews by saying people had become less easy to shock. "They're used to unusual statements. There are some who are easily rattled, but not as many. I did get some hate letters, but the silent majority was more silent than it used to be."
1973, plastic armor designed for a Max Factor promotion.
Of all those speaking out against Gernreich's bald statement, only one, the Ponce College of Beauty in Pao Alto, California, took any action. The beauty college ran a half-page ad in the Palo Alto Times headlined "Help Stamp Out Rudi Gernreich." The trip to Japan, while not a part of the official Expo program, was financed by Max Factor. Because of the sponsorship, Gernreich expanded his original Life magazine projection to include makeup in a new role as a kind of body protector to shield man from the sun's rays and from the cold. The unisex clothes that were part of the presentation-pants, skirts, bikinis, jumpsuits-were all clothes from previous Gernreich collections. The boots had been made for him by Capezio in 1965. If the clothes looked new and bizarre, Gernreich said it was only because they were worn by two bald people. "This is true of all clothes-who puts them on makes them what they are."
When Gernreich put the clothes for his spring 1971 collection on models carrying guns and wearing dog tags and combat boots, he fired another shot heard round the fashion world. The clothes themselves-previewed in October 1970, shortly after the student killings at Kent State-were basic, wearable knitted separates, but the rifles that the models carried took dead aim at the fashion industry itself.
"Women are on the warpath," Gernreich told press and buyers attending the opening. "They're tired of being sex objects." Then, in a swipe at designers showing the clothes of Russian peasants and other heroines from history books, Gernreich went on, "You simply can't design clothes for Chekhov heroines in 1970! Fashion has got to be relevant to women today. There are no 'escape clothes' in this collection because there is no escape. To desire the past is to negate the present and the future as well."
In keeping with the realism theme of the collection, all the clothes were priced under ninety dollars. And at a time when most major designers were showing the midi, Gernreich kept his hemlines well above the knees.
By fall 1971 Gernreich extended his attack on what he called "the nostalgia cult." "I see the conditions today like this: anonymity, universality, unisex, nudity as fact and not as kick, and above all reality. By reality, I mean the use of real things: blue jeans, polo shirts, T-shirts, overalls. Status fashion is gone. What remains? Something I am obliged to call authenticity. Comfort is the rationale. Good looks deriving more from the person than from the clothes. The clothes are merely an instrument for the individual's own body-message. Prices must be kept down. No more conspicuous consumption. Today, 'expensive' is what 'cheap' used to be: the hallmark of an invaterate vulgarity. And there is at last an awareness of age, true age, that is the sign of a real enlightenment. At last a woman over twenty-five no longer feels a moral Obligation to look like a teenager. A division line between the ages is beginning to appear. This in itself opens countless opportunities."
Perhaps the biggest shock Gernreich delivered in the seventies was that he had nothing more to say about the future. Fashion's leading futurist became the champion of "right now:' Amazingly, he was as alone in the present olthe early 1970s as he used to be when he was predicting the future in the 1960s.
While yesterday-fever gripped most of the fashion world, Gernreich immunized himself and his followers with massive doses of what he liked to call uniforms-simple, functional knitted tops and bottoms that took on the personality of the men and women who wore them. "Do you see any Gernreich signature in these clothes?" he would ask buyers. If they said yes, his face fell. More than anything, he wanted his clothes of that time to be anonymous.
Moffitt recalls a revealing incident of the era: "It was 1972, Bill and I had just moved back to Los Angeles. I was depressed with the fashion scene in New York and wanted to work more with Rudi. He and I were having lunch across the street from the Los Agneles County Museum of Art and were talking about how silly it was that Women's Wear Daily was raving so about Halston showing cardigan sweaters knotted around the shoulders. I said, 'If they think that's so great, why not just build a sweater right into the dress!' Rudi looked absolutely dumbfounded and said, 'How did you know? That's exactly what I'm doing: He then turned very serious and said: I don't want to work with you now. You inspire me, and I don't want to be inspired: Crestfallen, I went home and decided to start a family. Two months later, an effervescent Rudi bounded into my living room and asked me to model futuristic armor that he was going to do for a Max Factor promotion in July. When I reminded him that I would be eight months pregnant by then, he still thought that I could model. That was Rudi. Everything had changed, and now it was okay to be inspired. And while I did not model on that occasion, I continued to work with him after my son, Christopher, was born right up to his final collection in 1981."
Convinced that "the creative part of fashion is gone,· Gernreich believed that the next breakthrough in clothes would be technological. "Once the sewing machine has been replaced or sophisticated, once a designer can spray-on clothes or transmigrate fabrics to the body, new things will happen:' he said in 1971.
"The designer will become less artist, more technician. He'll be like an architect or engineer, with a sound background in chemistry. There won't be a need for sewing machine operators or cutters. Other machines will do this work. So a knowledge of machinery such as computers will therefore be essential.
"When our technology made it possible to put men on the moon everything developed so quickly that people just couldn't face it. They took refuge in the past. The past became the security blanket of the present. Today, no one talks about the present. It's gone to most people. Instead, they're trying to adjust for the future. We used to think only in terms of the present. But today's present is the past and the future is just a fleeting moment in time."
In Gernreich's view, the futuristic, lunar look of the sixties stopped short in the seventies and designers started reverting to the past because the moon was still a remote idea at the beginning of the sixties and it made sense to abstract it as a design theme.
"Once it became a reality, once we saw the possibility of relating to it directly, it became frightening. To most of us, the moon still seems remote and unconnected with our daily problems. In a way, many are bored with the emptiness of the moon. 50m-'ike me-are even turned off by it. Getting a man to the moon was a phenomenal feat. I don't deny that. But the monies spent in accomplishing that feat might well have been spent solving earthly problems. I still feel that the legitimate thing is for right now-not the future, not the past. Maybe when the first space station is an actual fact, there will be a stronger sense of reality about the moon and it will become a realistic influence. Right now, there's no room to playact with the moon."
1974, with perfume made for American Essence.
What there was room to do in the seventies was to continue to produce clothes for the seventies while extending the boundaries of fashion design into other design fields. In the fall of 1971, Gernreich introduced a furniture collection for Fortress-a combination of glass, leather, polished aluminum, including such items as a coffee table simulating a door that was complete with doorknob, end tables that looked like orange crates, and tables that resembled stretchers. In 1971 he created quilts for Knoll International that incorporated all the knitwear graphics he had used in his clothes. They were displayed at the Louvre in Paris. In 1974, the tenth anniversary of the topless swimsuit, he introduced a Rudi Gernreich fragrance packaged in a chemist's beaker and produced under the auspices of American Essence. After a brief success buoyed by his personal appearances, the company failed and Gernreich's perfume, along with the Anne Klein fragrance introduced at approximately the same time, disappeared from the market.
later in 1974, Gernreich created yet another less-is-moreism called the thong. A thin strip of fabric, the thong separated otherwise bare buttocks. There were both male and female versions. Gernreich said he created the thong to provide "the undeniable comfort and pleasure human beings take in nakedness." He considered the thong a compromise between liberty and legality because it offered the freedom of nudism without breaking the law on public shores. Little did Gernreich dream that sixteen years after his creation first hit the beach it would be considered indecent and illegal. In June 1990, the seven-member Florida cabinet in Tallahassee passed a restriction that banned thong swimsuits-those with only a string between the buttocks-on state-owned beaches. The ruling went into effect June 22 and set off a national controversy on whatthe Florida legislators called the case ofthe anal cleft. Even Phil Donahue got into the act when he interviewed two young thong-wearers who had been arrested in Sarasota for violating the law. They modeled their suits on national television.
Also in 1974, Gernreich once more costarred with Bella Lewitzky, with whom he had danced in Salome almost thirty years before, when both were membersof Lester Horton'stroupe. His remarkable costumes forthe Lewitzky presentation of Inscape were often part of the set and part of the plot. For instance, his "Siamese" wrestlers were joined at the skull in stretchable hoods that kept the dancers connected both literally and figuratively. Gernreich continued to collaborate with Lewitzky, designing sets and costumes for Pas de Bach in 1977, Rituals in 1979, Changes and Choices in 1981, and Confines in 1982.
Gernreich's idea of connecting the costumes for Inscape became a fashion pursuit as well: in 1975Gernreich created black nylon-jersey tube dresses fastened to sculptured aluminum jewelry by Christopher Den Blaker. Free-form necklaces, for example, held halter gowns in place and wide bracelets formed cuffs. That same year, Gernreich designed the first Jockey-like briefs and boxer shorts forwomen for Lily of France, predating Calvin Klein's 1983renditions by seven years. Rudi Gernreich cosmetics for Redken Laboratories appeared in 1976, Rudi Gernreich leotards for Ballet Makers, Inc., in 1977, Rudi Gernreich kitchen accessories, towels, and placemats for Barth Be Dreyfuss in 1977, Rudi Gernreich rugs for Regal Rugs in 1978, and Rudi Gernreich ceramic bathroom appointments for Wicker Wear, Inc., also in 1978.
IIhe last Rudi Gernreich knitwear collection appeared in 1981. His last venture outside the world of fashion, gourmet soups, started in 1982 and lasted until shortly before his death. His final design statement was the pubikini, "totally freeing the human body." Eyewitness photographer Helmut Newton reconstructs the proceedings: "Rudi told me about the project and asked if I would take a photo. There was no mention of a final look or anything like that. I said of course. Hesaid to come to his house and he would have a model ready. It was an early afternoon in March. "
The model, Sue Jackson, had been prepared in advance, her pubic hair shaped, shaved, and dyed poison green by Los Angeles hairdresser Rodney Washington, who followed the line Gernreich drew on Jackson's body with a grease pencil. Makeup artist Angelika Schubert created a body makeup and gave the model bright red lipsand nails. Jackson, whose hair also had a streak of bright green, wore atiny strip of fabric that extended in a wide-open V from hips to crotch, exposing the triangle of green-dyed pubes.
"I posed her on the couch and Rudi sat next to her. I remember Rudi putting some green paint or dye on her, and I remember how very excited he was about the design. Since then, I've always thought how that pubikini with the green on the pubic hair was so much newer an expression of nudity than just letting a boob hang out the way Yves Saint Laurent's models did in 1989. It struck me as touching and wonderful that he was so excited at this point in his life."
Gernreich died one month later, April 21, 1985, of lung cancer.
1983, Rudi as guest chef at the Cadillac Cafe, Los Angeles.
Epilogue
I met Rudi Gernreich in 1957 when I was in Los Angeles covering a story for the Chicago Tribune. From then until I moved to Los Angeles in 1969,1 called him Mr. GERN-rike. He never once corrected my mispronunciation. I finally caught on after several calls to his Santa Monica Boulevard headquarters when I heard Fumi, his secretary, answer, "Rudi GERN-rick."
I always felt that anyone kind enough not to have corrected me all those years was someone very special. And Rudi certainly was very special. He wasn't the only designer in the world with vision. But he was the first designer to look beyond the salons into the streets, beyond the beautiful people and the lunch bunch, as they were called in his heyday, to the hard-hatters and the tuna-sandwich crowd.
He was artist, sociologist, economist, humorist, psychic, Leo, and probably the only two-car revolutionary to wear Gucci loafers. Even at the height of his antistatus statements, he drove to work in a big, white '64 Bentley and had a love-hate relationship with his always-ailing '53 Nash Healy.
Christian Dior said he got his greatest fashion inspiration while in his bath or bed, and he compared what he called his incubation period-the two weeks he spent in the country before beginning each collection-to the migration of the eels to the Sargasso Sea.
Gernreich's fashion incubator was his mind. He was as cerebral as he was visual, as smart as he was heart. So were his clothes. They talked, tantalized, teased, tormented, and tickled the imagination. Sometimes they even scared people.
Gernreich was a great wit and punster. He loved playing jokes. In 1972, for example, I remember snickering, then laughing out loud at his spoof of Halston's twin sweater sets -- the then-fashionable affectation of wearing on sweater tied around the shoulders over its twin. Gernreich's takeoffs had four sleeves -- two for the arms and two to tie around the shoulders.
Spoofing the topless in a 1970 advertisement. (Courtesy J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency)
Rudi had a presence, a kind of center-stage persona that belied his five-foot six-inch frame. If he was the center of attention, he purred. If he was not, he either became the center of attention- usually with an amusing story~rhe left. And although his body was strong and compact, he moved with a dancer's grace, even as he became more barrel-chested with age. Gernreich the brilliant colorist always wore black so he could "hear himself think."
He spoke with a stage!American accent, and he expressed himself with ease, eloquence, and often a self-deprecating wit. He loved telling stories. One of my favorites concerned the maid at the Algonquin Hotel, where Gernreich stayed for years. "Poor Mr. Gernreich," he overheard her telling one of the buyers she'd seen many times during his presentations of samples in the suite. "He comes here at least four times a year. He works so hard trying to sell his clothes, showing them over and over, and yet no one ever buys a thing. He always has to pack them up and take them all back to California with him."
TIME magazine cover, December 1, 1967. (Copyright © 1967 Time Warner Inc. Reprinted by permission)
The Gernreich headquarters at 8460 Santa Monica Boulevard was a square stucco saltbox painted khaki-a modern, almost mysterious building. I was always struck by what I saw as the symbolism of that building standing alone on a highly trafficked street just as Rudi stood alone in the world of fashion.
The building's only decoration was the twelve-foot-high carved panel doors on which the designer's name was spelled out in chrome letters-all in sans serif uppercase. Inside, the setting was part Bauhaus, part 2001, part preecology (there was a zebra-skin rug on the floor), part post-status (a single Tshirt with the designer's picture on it was tacked on the wall that was once covered with Gernreich on the cover of Time).
Everything in the showroom was either white (three walls and the floor made of hexagonal bathroom tiles), black (the leather on the chrome-framed Marcel Breuer chairs and sofa), or khaki (one burlap wall). The only color was the green floor-to-ceiling jungle of Schefflera and palm, and the red and green in the lithographs by Carmi.
There were no family photographs, no scrapbooks, no tourist's treasures, no hidden bar timed to open at the stroke of 5:30, not even a gold reproduction of his one millionth no-bra bra.
1976, Rizzoli asked a group of prominent designers to create fantasy clothes for an exhibition. Rudi dressed a couple in bicycle parts. (photograph © William Claxton)
Gernreich's private office was a world of browns-personal, warm browns that contrasted with the more public schematics of the black- nd-white showroom. A Charles Eames chair, leather pig, tortoise-shell telephone, mushroom lamp-all these sepia tones made the room feel like an old Sunday rotogravure section redesigned with modern graphics. The room's only concession to the past was a Mexican chest inlaid with bone. It was brown too, and inside, behind its closed doors, were Gernreich's many awards.
Behind the Moroccan wall that surrounded the home he shared with Oreste Pucciani in Hollywood's Laurel Canyon, Rudi was both open and closed about his relationship with his lover: he readily invited straight guests to dinner parties cohosted by Oreste but was reluctant to discuss his sexuality-at least with me. I "knew" he was gay, and I think he knew I knew, but neither of us ever brought up the subject.
Rudi started each new season by taking the thumbnail sketches he'd been preparing whenever and wherever the idea struck and worked them into detailed drawings, complete with fabric samples and color swatches. Those quick, crude sketches might have been generated by an actual incident witnessed by Gernreich, as was the case in his 1970 swim clothes that came about as a direct result of "watching kids jump into a swimming pool with their clothes on and emerge in a dripping wet cling of sex appeal that made bikinis look almost boring."
1974, the thong. (photograph © William Claxton)
Rudi said ideas often came to him in those moments just before waking or just before falling asleep. He called the experience a bit mystic, an almost trancelike state that he always entered before a collection deadline.
Rudi's most immediate critics were his three fitting models, Jimmy Mitchell, Peggy Moffitt, and Leon Bing. "I care very much what the model thinks," Rudi told me during an interview about their effect on his work. "I work only with models I like and respect, and their reactions are extremely important to me. I'm excited by an honest and instantaneous reaction. If the model is cool, if she says something doesn't feel right, or if it's just okay, I feel I'm not really on the ball. I'm nottoo concerned if she doesn't like a specific design, but I'm very concerned if she doesn't feel comfortable in it."
So how will Rudi Gernreich go down in history? Is he better than Chanel? Dior? Balenciaga? Givenchy? Pucci? Cardin? Courreges? Saint Laurent? Because he never had Paris for a stage, with all its attendant publicity and fashion power, it's difficult to rank him internationally. But his continuing influence on international fashion was evident as late as 1991, when Gernrichian graphics came back into style along with Gernrichian colors, tattoos, shapes, and attitudes. The space-age clothes he first sent up and later shot down were once more rocketing around fashion runways from Milan to New York. All the Gernreich bywords of the sixties- skinny, mini, neo, geo, pop, op-returned to the language of international fashion. The simple, spare shapes that were considered futuristic in 1961 were suddenly "modern" thirty years later. The wit Gernreich brought to fashion was fashionable again. Unisex was in everyday usage. And those historical costumes that looked so dated to Rudi in the seventies were finally beginning to look out of sync to a lot of people twenty years later.
My favorite appraisal of his talent comes from New York Times fashion reporter Bernadine Morris: "Gernreich's big contribution wasn't the cut of a sleeve or a particular color or any of those dressmaking details so dear to the hearts of fashion people who love to return to the good old days which they understood so well. It was a brave new sweeping concept-that clothes should be comfortable. And just the tiniest bit fun to wear."
As for me, Rudi was my first fashion hero. I think he was a genius.