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THE RUDI GERNREICH BOOK |
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1953, black peplum and multicolored checked pants. (photograph © Christa) The man many consider the quintessential American desigiler was born in Vienna, Austria, on August 8, 1922. He got his first look at the world of high fashion in a dress shop run by his aunt, Hedwig Mueller. In the shop Gernreich called his "sanctuary from the rigid, militaristic atmosphere of school," he spent hours sketching designs for Viennese society and learning as much as he could about fabrics. By the time he was twelve, his fashion sketches had been seen by the Austrian designer Ladislaus Zcettel, who was leaving for London to design film costumes for Alexander Korda, and who later came to America to run Henri Bendel's couture studio in New York. Zcettel offered Gernreich an apprenticeship in London, but his mother felt he was too young to leave home. (Gernreich's father, Siegmund Gernreich, a hosiery manufacturer, committed suicide in 1930 when his son was eight.) In 1938, just six months after the March 13 Anschluss, sixteen-year-old Gernreich and his mother joined the stream of Jewish refugees and escaped to California. His first job in the United States was working in a mortuary. Gernreich later recalled, "I grew up overnight. There Iwas with all those dead bodies. Eventually I got used to the corpses. But I do smile sometimes when people tell me my clothes are so body-conscious Imust have studied anatomy. You bet I studied anatomy."
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