Rudi Gernreich: (1922–85) American fashion designer, b. Vienna. In 1938, he immigrated to California, where he studied in Los Angeles. He worked as a dancer and costume designer before becoming a freelance designer. His signature style included ready-to-wear sportswear of dramatic stark cuts. He created a short-lived sensation with topless “Swiss cheese” bathing suits, which incorporated multiple cut-outs, and topless nightgowns. He made popular and inexpensive knitwear and long, straight halter dresses. He often used fabrics with geometric patterns and narrow stripes and introduced plastic fabrics in futuristic modes. In the early 1960s Gernreich opened a Seventh Avenue showroom in New York where he showed his popular designs for Harmon knitwear and his own more expensive line of experimental garments. During the decade he acquired a reputation for being the most radical designer in America; his designs included the jacket with one notched and one rounded lapel, tuxedos made of white satin, and the topless bathing suit of 1964, which reflected the new vogue for topless sunbathing.
(http://www.american-buddha.com/ , http://www.metmuseum.org/ , Corbis)
