Rudi Gernreich was one first class Fashion Designer of America in the 60s. Born in Vienna in 1922 and emigrated to America to escape the Nazis in 1938. The son of a manufacturer of tights and born in a Viennese intellectual family in the decade of the 20, Gernreich was predisposed to become one of the most revolutionary designers of the 20th century.
His greatest success and launching was in the swimwear line, influenced by the Bauhaus functionalism conceived a design based on wearing underwear coordinated to celebrate the unfettered movement of the body, hence arises the "monokini", Rudi uncovered the women, freed from all bondage and thus was disowned by friends and strangers. In the edition that went on sale sold 3,000 units in just one summer, and thus received a proposal concerned a magazine to design a cover story so he made the monokini that came back dressed by a prostitute, there to stardom.
Gernreich changed the way women dress, at the beach the swimsuit model unstructured by Gernreich remains the preferred model for women.
Gernreich invented the bra "unsupported" in 1964, it was a soft nylon bra with no padding or boning in the breasts naturally assumed their instead of being molded into an aesthetic ideal.
All this happened in the late '50s and early '60s, it was a time when the designer shocked the fashion world for their unusual color combinations such as pink and orange mixed with red purple and blue green, all interspersed with dots and dashes. His work always controversial but original, altered the course of fashion for generations to come.
Gernreich was the first to use vinyl for garments, and not interested in any haute couture or the red carpet, what he wanted was to dress the common people and used the street as a showcase itself.
Another term he invented was "unisex" for clothing, which earned him many detractors called him a lewd, but his admirers always saw it as what it was, a great visionary of fashion, a designer risky, whose clothing have always been endowed with agility, grace, full of sense of humor. He conceived of clothing that could be exchanged between men and women, such as the caftan that reaches the ground or flared trousers made of point. If a mistake was made not to cooperate with U.S. stores and no link to the French fashion, which in a decade on 50-bit enabled you to do.
Gernreich was more interested in how they looked up their designs in detail or decoration. And continued to show his sympathy for the liberation of women with their collection of 1971 in which women wear safari dresses military-style. Other innovative designs were the first shirtwaist dress, blouses, coordinated sets of clothing, bags, hats and socks.
He was a great experimenter of fabric, such as the constant research of potential that could have the vinyl or plastic. His clothing has been part of an overall design philosophy, ranging from furniture design, kitchen accessories, blankets, bedspreads and even in 1982, gourmet soups.
Like any artist, Rudi Gernreich had a muse, and it was Peggy Moffitt (recognized model of the 60's) that along with her husband, the photographer William Claxton eventually forming a single triad in the mid 60s. They based their main idea by incorporating the-art fashion but always with futuristic search results. Unlike Pierre Cardin and Andre Courreges, who designed from a perspective focused on the exclusivity of haute couture, Rudi Gernreich always had very clear vocation to design a practical motive for the women of the time, even though their cutting-edge online had an impact as a visual motif that as practical realization.
Certainly Rudi Gernreich was never considered one of the "great" because of his own commitment to their ideals and the fact of living life as he wanted and felt. He was always honest in his work, did not participate in projects that did not fit his character and perhaps for that very reason was more anonymous, because he decided to go his way without looking, or care what the rest of their colleagues did. He would not succumb to the charms of Haute Couture and therefore there are ladies who still today would be eternally grateful to him for freeing them from the sobriety and simplicity of the clothes they wore and even more to clear the minds of viewers by providing images and dresses for memory.
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