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THE RUDI GERNREICH BOOK |
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Rudi at work, Los Angeles, 1966. Looking Back at a Futurist Rudi Gernreich bared breasts and pubic hair, shaved heads and bodies, and passed out guns, all in the name of fashion. Clergymen denounced his fashion exploits from the pulpit. His topless bathing suit was banned by the pope, denounced by Izvestia, and buried in an Italian time capsule between the Bible and the birth control pill. To many in the fashion world, Gernreich was a prophet, a seer with 20/20 fashion vision. To his detractors, he was also a prophet: the oracle of ugly. Gernreich saw himself as two designers. One was a fashion-oriented originator motivated by the need to create modern clothes for the twentieth century -- and beyond. This was the Gernreich who won every major award American fashion could bestow. The other Gernreich was a social commentator who just happened to work in the medium of clothes. In Gernreich's words: "Prior to the sixties, clothes were clothes. Nothing else. Then, when they started coming from the streets, I realized you could say things with clothes. Design was not enough. Probably because of the impact of my topless bathing suit of 1964 I became much more interested in clothes as sociological statements. I feel it's important to say something that is not confined to its medium."
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