Designer fashion philadelphia

A stunning show salutes renegade fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, who dreamed up the thong -- and the Mattachine Society

In October 1965 the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia gave Andy Warhol his first solo show. The place was a madhouse as the crowd gathered and spilled out to the street. The apex of the evening was a riveting improvised performance by Warhol Factory provocateur Edie Sedgwick, whose primary prop was the billowing sleeves of her Rudi Gernreich dress. Now, over 35 years later, the same museum is paying tribute to perhaps the most famous unknown fashion designer with its fall show titled "Rudi Gernreich: Fashion Will Go Out of Fashion."

The exhibit presents more than 125 pieces, contextualized with slides, photos, and footage from the Hollywood movies he costumed. There's even a visual catwalk where projections of models move in a virtual three-dimensional space, bringing Gernreich's fashions back to life.

"Everything Gernreich did was innovative," says ICA director Claudia Gould. "Now that I'm so aware of his work, I see how much he influenced both designers and pop culture." Looking at Gernreich's legacy, it's clear that Courtney Love would adore his 1968 "baby" dresses; Sarah Jessica Parker would look smashing in the men's underwear he designed for Lily of France in 1976; and the allure of the first-ever thong, unveiled by Gernreich in 1974, has not been lost on Pamela Anderson Lee. Yet Gernreich is probably best known for the 1964 topless bathing suit, which irked the pope, got splashed across the pages of newspapers and magazines around the world, and was the target of protests.

Peggy Moffitt, Gernreich's model and muse, who put together a stunning Taschen publication called The Rudi Gernreich Book, wore that bathing suit. While she still adores the image of her pert nipples, as captured by her husband, photographer William Claxton, she says today, "I often felt Rudi's pure talent got dismissed because of the headlines. Certainly he had a sense of drama and showmanship, but he took fashion and what he was doing with it very seriously."

Yet the hubbub surrounding the topless bathing suit and his later appearance on the cover of Time impressed Gernreich. He became interested in clothes as sociological statements. "I realized you could say things with clothes," he said at a time when high fashion was still reserved for the rich. Much of what was to come--whether it was his gender-bending unisex line in 1970 or his bright and bold caftans or his Kent State--inspired line, which included guns as accessories--was designed to liberate individuals from convention toward comfort and function. As New York Times fashion reporter Bernadine Morris said about his legacy, "It was a brave new sweeping concept that clothes should be comfortable. And just the tiniest bit fun to wear."

But Gernreich never abandoned his political perspective. It came naturally to the Austrian immigrant, who arrived in Los Angeles with his mother, a lifelong socialist who bore her son at Vienna's workers hospital despite her ability to afford pricier care. "He was always interested in the Marxist point of view," says 89-year-old Harry Hay. Meeting Gernreich in 1950, Hay was struck by what he calls Gernreich's "brilliant radiance." The two men became lovers and then political allies; they founded the Mattachine Society, which has been credited with starting the American gay rights movement.

Despite Gernreich's political passions, he did not come out during his lifetime. "He just thought his sexuality was obvious," recalls Moffitt of her dear friend, who wore a toupee, Gucci loafers, and jumpsuits with industrial-strength zippers and who drove around West Hollywood in his 1964 white Bentley. "It wasn't something he felt he needed to talk about." When he died in 1985, Gernreich was living with his longtime lover, a UCLA philosophy professor named Oreste Pucciani. His last political statement wasn't about fashion. He simply left an endowment to the American Civil Liberties Union earmarked for litigation and education for lesbian and gay rights.

RUDI GERNREICH: FASHION WILL GO OUT OF FASHION

* Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia * September 15-November 11

Stukin also writes for Time.

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