Born: Vienna, Austria, 1922
Died: Los Angeles, California, USA, 1985
The dancer turned designer, who many regard as America's answer to Pierre Cardin, Rudi Gernreich was a 1960s' experimentalist, most famous for the topless swimsuit, which he launched in 1964.
Gernreich's career followed a natural path. He studied at Los Angles City College, later becoming a dancer and costume designer with the Lester Horton Dance Company. He designed freelance for a variety of markets, including swimwear, shoes and knitwear before opening his own showroom on Seventh Avenue in New York, which straddled two lines of knitwear and experimental ideas.
It was Gernreich's infamous breast-exposing swimsuit that spread his notoriety and secured his place in fashion history. Like the French futurists of the 1960s, Gernreich was experimenting with plastics and vinyl fabrics, exploring the idea of unisex clothes and inventions with self-explanatory titles: namely the No-Bra Bra and Pubikini. His model and muse Peggy Moffitt, who modelled the topless swimsuit, had a suitably startling look which dovetailed with Gernreich's vision of the future.
