Word: rudy
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Fashion Designer Rudi Gernreich, 47, is best known for designing almost nothing at all: the topless bathing suit. Although he sold 3,000 copies at $25 apiece, he did not really mean to market it. He made the suit mainly as a "statement" in support of the "liberated look" of the late 1960s-a look he further promoted with his No-Bra bra, clinging knit minidresses, "Swiss cheese" swimsuits and see-through blouses. All that pioneering so exhausted Rudi that he treated himself to a year's sabbatical in order to restore his flagging energies; he convalesced comfortably...
...main showroom of his elegant Los Angeles salon last week, Rudi readied his forces for the first big assault: a preview showing of his 1970 line to be staged at the Hancock Park home of Socialite Eugenia Butler. The first order of business was to shave the heads and bodies of his two models. "Hair hides a lot," explained Gernreich, "and body hair is too sexual. I don't want to confuse the idea of freedom with sexual nakedness. Openness and honesty call for no covering of any kind." For Thomas Broom, 30, Rudi's male model...
...Rudi Gernreich designs the topless bathing suit...
...only can, but is. Some men, of course, are old hands with a bag: Designer Rudi Gernreich has a complete wardrobe of them. Others, like Sammy Davis Jr., Jazz Trumpeter Hugh Masakela, Actors Jim Brown and Elliott Gould, Manhattan Publisher Jerry Mason and a host of lesser-known straight men, are busily following suit. Hippies have long favored the style, and members of a Houston contingent not only wear them but do a thriving business making and selling their brown suede "stash bags" for from $3 to $5. Industrial Designer Darrell Howe likes the fashion so much he is designing...
Second the Motion. The nude look has come and gone throughout history, from Eden to Egypt to Greece, to Rome, to France, to the U.S. today. The current manifestation began in 1964 when Designer Rudi Gernreich produced his infamous topless bathing suit. The Kremlin and the Vatican denounced it; most American women were completely unprepared (or unequipped) to wear it. In defense, Gernreich explained his purpose: "By exaggerating a new freedom of the body now, I hope to make the moderate, right degree of freedom more acceptable in the future." Yves St. Laurent seconded the motion two years later with...