Historical image of the day (I)

Peggy Moffitt in topless swimsuit by Rudi Gernreich
Photograph by William Claxton (American, 1927-2008)
image from here

Rudi Gernreich was a fashion designer and gay activist. Born in Vienna on August 8, 1922 he fled Austria at age 16 due to Nazism. He migrated to the U.S., settling in Los Angeles, California. A dancer, performing with the Lester Horton company around 1945.

He moved into fashion design via fabric design, and then worked closely with model Peggy Moffitt and photographer William Claxton, pushing the boundaries of "the futuristic look" in clothing over three decades. An exhibition of his work at the Phoenix Art Museum in 2003 hailed him as "one of the most original, prophetic and controversial American designers of the 1950s, '60s and '70s."

He is perhaps most notorious for inventing the first topless swimsuit, or monokini, as well as the pubikini (a bikini with a window in front to reveal the woman's pubic hair) and later the thong swimsuit. He was also a strong advocate of unisex clothing, dressing male and female models in identical clothing and shaving their heads and bodies completely bald. He was also known as the first designer to use vinyl and plastic in clothes, and he designed the Moonbase Alpha uniforms on the television series Space: 1999.

Rudi Gernreich died twenty-five years ago.