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THE RUDI GERNREICH BOOK |
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1971, trompe l'oeil wool-knit minidress. The story behind the decision was more complex: ul had felt for several years that couture was over, that expensive clothes didn't make sense. My own Rudi Gernreich designs were becoming outrageously high. By the time an outfit was complete with matching stockings, shoes, and headgear it was not only expensive, it was difficult to handle in a merchandising sense. Stores weren't geared to sell stockings and underwear in the same department with a dress or skirt, so the total look I believed in was never really totalized. "I knew I either had to expand in order to bring down prices or stay small and suffer increased prices. The idea of expanding to a much larger business scared me. I didn't want to be a big manufacturer with all the attendant business problems. This was not my calling, not my interest. I felt I had to be experimental at any cost, and that meant always being on the verge of a success or flop. "At the same time, I had staff problems, difficulties which meant a major change would have to be made. I was at the point of nervous collapse -- overworked, overpressured, fed up. My last collection had been terribly extreme, an absurd kind of statement. Everyone criticized it. And I had become so involved with the business end I couldn't find enough time to design. "The knits for Harmon were everything I believed in-utilitarian, wearable, priced right-but I wanted out of that arrangement, too. Even though with Harmon, unlike any other manufacturer I've ever worked with, there never had been a problem. "When I told Harmon of my decision, he was marvelous-very, very understanding. He told me to take three months off and we'd talk again, and assured me that we'd do the Harmon Knitwear line the easiest possible way. He said I'd be foolish to give up our association, and since I already had a collection for him in the works I finished it before I left for Morocco. It was one of the most profitable collections I ever did for him. "Once I made the decision, there was no more trace of the nervous breakdown. I felt free, relieved. And I rented a dream place, a castle in Tangiers owned by Yves Vidal, president of Knoll International. I traveled through Morocco, also in Europe and was away almost a year. I did the Harmon thing easily, happily, and I never missed a knit collection. "When I returned, a whole new professional life opened up for me." It was the fall of 1969, soon after he returned from his sabbatical intent on uncomplicating his design life. It was the year his European counterparts were conjuring up midis to welcome the new decade. The year of moon walks and moratoriums, Right On and Up the Establishment.
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