Rudi Gernreich

Rudolf "Rudi" Gernreich who lived in Vienna, Austria. His father was a stocking manufacturer who had served in World War I and who died by suicide when Gernreich was eight years old. He also designed freelance but left Lester Horton in 1948 and became a fabric salesman for Hoffman Company. Gernreich moved into fashion design from fabric design.

The fashion climate at that time was dictated by designers in Paris. In 1949 he briefly worked in New York at George Carmel but didn't like the position because he felt pressured to imitate Parisian fashion. He also designed costumes for Lester Horton until 1952. For most of the 1950s, he collaborated with Hungarian Holocaust survivor and immigrant Renée Firestone in Los Angeles, before she started her own line in 1960.

In 1955, he began designing swimwear for Westwood Knitting Mills in Los Angeles. They hired him in 1959 as the swimwear designer. Genesco Corporation also hired him as a shoe designer in 1959. He completed his seven-year contract with Walter Bass in 1960 and founded his firm G.R. Designs in Los Angeles. He changed his company's name to Rudi Gernreich Inc. in 1964. His designs were featured in what is generally regarded as the first fashion video, Basic Black: William Claxton w/Peggy Moffitt, in 1966.

In the early 1960s, Gernreich opened a Seventh Avenue showroom in New York City where he showed his popular designs for Harmon knitwear and his own more expensive line of experimental garments.

In 1966, Gernreich was named one of the "fashion revolutionaries" in New York by Women's Wear Daily, alongside Edie Sedgwick, Tiger Morse, Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, Baby Jane Holzer, André Courrèges, Emanuel Ungaro, Yves Saint Laurent, and Mary Quant.

thumb|Unisex costume design for Moonbase Alpha (Space: 1999) by Rudi Gernreich.He designed the Moonbase Alpha uniforms worn by the main characters of the 1970s British science-fiction television series Space: 1999, pushing the boundaries of the futuristic look in clothing over the course of three decades.

Gernreich developed strong feelings about society's sexualization of the human body and disagreed with religious and social beliefs that the body was essentially shameful. He wanted to reduce the stigma of a naked body, to "cure our society of its sex hang up," as he put it. Gerneich stated, "To me, the only respect you can give to a woman is to make her a human being. A totally emancipated woman who is totally free."

Gernreich approached fashion as a social commentary. He said he wanted to create a "utility principle" that would "take our mind off how we look and concentrate on really important matters." Fashion writer Marylou Luther, who became a good friend of Gernreich, wrote that he had two motives in his designs: one was to create modern fashion "for the 20th century and beyond," and the other was as "a social commentator, who just happened to work in the medium of clothes." Gernreich purposefully used his designs to advance his socio-political views. Gernreich developed a reputation as an avant-garde designer who broke many design rules. As a former dancer, Gernreich was interested in liberating the body from the limitations of clothing. Most swimsuits at the time had stiff inner construction with boned linings. His designs used elasticized wool knits that clung to the woman's body.

In its December 1962 issue, Sports Illustrated remarked, "He has turned the dancer's leotard into a swimsuit that frees the body. In the process, he has ripped out the boning and wiring that made American swimsuits seagoing corsets". In 1964, he created the first topless swimsuit, which he called the "monokini". Gernreich was featured on the cover of Time in December 1967 with models Peggy Moffitt and Leon Bing. The magazine described him as "the most way-out, far-ahead designer in the U.S."

Cynthia Amnéus, Chief Curator and Curator of Fashion and Textiles at the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio, said "Rudi was one of the most important and visionary American fashion designers of the 21st century ... Rudi was doing very shocking and avant-garde things, like taking all the structure out of swimwear, and creating a trapeze dress in the 1950s way before Yves Saint Laurent did."

He was the sixth American designer to be elected to the Coty American Fashion Hall of Fame. He designed the first see-through chiffon blouse, fashioned clothes from leotards and tights, decorated them with zippers and dog leash clasps, and in 1970 introduced the idea of unisex clothing that was minimalist, utilitarian, and optional, including men's suits and hats for women.. He showed his designs on a male and female model who were both shaved.

In 1974, in response to Los Angeles banning nude beaches, he designed and named the first thong bathing suit that exposed the buttocks for both men and women. That month he first envisioned a topless swimsuit that became the Monokini. The Monokini bottom was similar to a maillot swimsuit style but ended at mid-torso and was supported by two straps between the breasts and around the neck.

When Claxton's photograph of his wife Peggy Moffitt modeling the design was published in Women's Wear Daily on June 4, 1964, it generated a great deal of controversy in the United States and other countries. Moffitt said the design was a logical evolution of Gernreich's avant-garde ideas in swimwear design as much as a scandalous symbol of the permissive society. He saw the swimsuit as a protest against repressive society. He predicted that "bosom will be uncovered within five years". He saw baring of a woman's breasts as a form of freedom.

He initially did not intend to produce the design commercially, but Kirtland of Look urged him to make it available to the public. "I thought we'd sell only six or seven, but I decided to design it anyway." Moffitt later said that the Monokini "was a political statement. It wasn't meant to be worn in public."

In January, 1965, he told Gloria Steinem in an interview that despite the criticism he'd do it again.