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THE RUDI GERNREICH BOOK |
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1957, swimsuits, including a ladderback version. (photographs © William Claxton) "I was aware that the great masses of the world would find this shocking and immoral, but I couldn't help feel the implicit hypocrisy that made something in one culture immoral and in another perfectly acceptable. The breast had become a sex symbol not out of some preordained plan of nature, but because we'd made it a sex symbol. "Because of the Women's Wear Daily statement and the Sports Illustrated headline, people began to ask me if I really meant what I said. The more they asked, the more I began to feel more and more right about the idea. About the end of 1963, Susanne Kirtland of Look magazine called to say she was going to do a trend story along futuristic lines and would like me to make the no-top suit. I said no, that the time was not right. She said, 'Oh, but you have to. I've already had clearance from the front office.' "At first I thought if I didn't do it, she'd ask Emilio Pucci or someone else because she was so determined to get it done. I thought it would be terrible if someone else took my prediction and made it a reality. I didn't want to be scooped. "I knew it could ruin my career, could put me right off the map, but my conviction that it was right and my fear of being preempted by someone else led me to say okay. I felt it was a little early, but it would be done in the next couple of years anyway, so I even rationalized the timing. "The first suit I sent her was a Balinese sarong that began just under the breasts. Susanne said she didn't feel it was stark enough, that it should be bold, almost like an exclamation mark. Although I felt the suit should be just a bikini bottom, that would have been just an evolution of an idea, not a design. So I came up with the strapped suit that later made history, and the back view of it appeared in Look on June 2, 1964. It was photographed in the Bahamas on a prostitute. "In order to try to avoid sensationalism, [photographerl William Claxton, model Peggy Moffitt's husband, Peggy and I decided to take our own photographs of Peggy in the suit and present them to the fashion press and the news magazines. We agreed to avoid Playboy and the girlie books. "To our complete amazement, everyone in the fashion world was panicked by it. Sally Kirkland of Life, Nancy White of Harper's Bazaar-no one wanted anything to do with the suit or the pictures. Finally, Carol Bjorkman of Women's Wear Daily printed Bill's front- view picture of Peggy on June 3, and Newsweek printed a back view on June 8.
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