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THE RUDI GERNREICH BOOK |
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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.
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