Rudi Gernreich holding bolts of fabric, 1966. Photograph © William Claxton, LLC, courtesy of Demont Photo Management & Fahey/Klein Gallery Los Angeles, with permission of the Rudi Gernreich trademark.
ensembles from his collections. There are ten custom 3D-printed mannequins with flat feet throughout the exhibition that model the clothes based on pictures of his models. There is a section on everything from Gernreich’s support of feminism by creating pantsuits for women and mod dresses to his unisex collection that stripped clothing of any gender markers. “So much of the exhibition is all about gender neutrality and basic rights across the board regardless of gender, religion, preferences, the end. Just a really great, basic fundamental love of humans,” Jean said. “So, I think that’s going to resonate with people right now since there is so much conversation out in open discussion about gendered dressing.” One piece that Jean is excited about is an ivory-colored pantsuit from a 1964 collection that was to be presented at the Coty American Fashion Awards. “They would not allow this pantsuit to walk the runway because, I mean, a woman in pants, oh my god. Our brains are going to explode. Unbelievable,” Jean told Echo. The ensemble was named after Marlene Dietrich because she was well known for wearing pants when it was still unacceptable for women to wear them.
Fearless Fashion: Rudi Gernreich at Phoenix Art Museum By Velvet Wahl
F
ashion designer Rudi Gernreich revolutionized the fashion industry with innovative designs that challenged the status quo in the 1960s and ‘70s. He pioneered several fashion staples like the thong and the pantsuit for women, and he wasn’t afraid to push the boundaries of acceptable fashion in his time. As a young man, Gernreich fled Nazi Germany in 1938 to avoid persecution as a Viennese Jew. At the age of 16, he landed in Los Angeles with his mother and found a community where he could flourish. Gernreich’s work as a fashion designer was informed by his early experiences of discrimination, and he fought for equality among genders and for gay rights. His work as an activist is highlighted in the Fearless Fashion exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum. The museum is excited to share Gernreich’s message with the Phoenix community through his fashion designs. “We’re connected through what we wear, and we tell the world how we feel every day by what we wear. It’s such a powerful tool. And the way that he saw dressing, there was so much joy,” Helen Jean, the Jacquie Dorrance
10
APRIL 2021
|
ECHOMAG.COM
curator of fashion design for the Phoenix Art Museum, said. “And I think the color that he uses really expresses that. He really expressed the joy of dressing.” The exhibition, which originated at the Skirball Cultural Center, will open at the museum on April 7. Skirball is a Jewish educational institution in Los Angeles that is “a place of meeting guided by the Jewish tradition of welcoming the stranger and inspired by the American democratic ideals of freedom and equality,” according to the Skirball website. The exhibition highlights Gernreich’s fashion designs “through the lens of social justice and social conscience,” Dani Killam, co-curator of the exhibition at Skirball, said. “In putting together the exhibition, we certainly wanted to focus on his role in gay rights, we wanted to focus on his role in gender equality, and we wanted to focus on his role within the conversation of body positivity and inclusivity of different body ideals,” Killam said. The exhibition is broken down into seven sections, including Gernreich’s history and background, and showcases over 80
“That’s really significant because Marlene is one of the people that we credit as pioneering wearing pants out in public in the 1930s and ’40s. She was wearing silk pajama pants and beach loungewear out in public, she and Katharine Hepburn,” Jean said. “So, there’s just some really interesting connections that I think are wonderful between these designers and the things that they explore.” Gernreich created clothes for women that were comfortable. He played with new materials and took out hard-ribbing in garments like bras and swimsuits. He focused on celebrating the human body instead of sexualizing the human body. One of his most famous pieces, the “monokini,” a bikini with no top, pushed for the acceptance of breasts as a non-sexual part of the body. “I think Rudi used his platform to advocate for the power of dress and the power of presenting yourself in this world and doing it in your way and doing it at the beat of your own drum,” Killam said. “So, I hope that people walk away from this exhibition, embracing their personal, unique identities and how beautiful that is when we all just listen to that interior voice and not try to fit into whatever is being dictated to us.” Many of his fashion designs were heavily influenced by his background as a dancer for the Lester Horton Dance Theater, which he joined after arriving in Los Angeles. He wanted people to wear clothing that would allow them to move freely while also accentuating the body. He later went on FEATURE