Born On This Day- August 8th... Rudi Gernreich

Do I have your attention boys & girls? This story is important. This story is fabulous, & this story is true. A little Viennese gay baby boy- Rudi Gernreich was born on this day in 1922. Jewish Rudi fled Austria at age 16 to escape the Nazis.

Following the 1938 Anschluss, the Gernreichs, mother & son migrated to L.A.. They survived on the pastries that his mother baked & he sold door to door.

Gernreich’s first job was washing cadavers for autopsy. Gernreich: “I grew up overnight, I do smile sometimes when people tell me my clothes are so body-conscious I must have studied anatomy. You bet I studied anatomy.”

Gernreich was enamored of Martha Graham. He became a dancer with the Lester Horton company. In 1947, Gernreich danced with Bella Lewitzky, with whom he had danced in Salome 30 years before, when both were members of Horton's troupe. His remarkable costumes for the Lewitzky presentation of Inscape were part of the set & part of the plot. His "Siamese twins" were joined at the skull in stretchable hoods that kept the dancers connected both literally & figuratively. Gernreich continued to collaborate with Lewitzky, designing sets & costumes for Pas de Bach in 1977, Rituals in 1979, Changes & Choices in 1981, & Confines in 1982, all danced by by my college boyfriend & still good pal, the beautiful Walter Kennedy in his dancing prime.

Walter Kennedy in vintage Gerneich

60 years ago in LA, Gernreich, with his lover at the time- Harry Hay & others, formed the Mattachine Society, the first gay rights group in the country. Some later criticized the designer for not coming out after taking those amazingly brave early steps, but most of us now could barely imagine how difficult & dangerous it was to do so: you could lose your job, your friends & family, even your life. Gernreich did not come out until after his death, when the estate of he & his partner of 31 years- Oreste Pucciani, provided an endowment for ACLU in their names. Oreste Pucciani, chairman of the U.C.L.A. French department was instrumental in bringing Sartre to the attention of Americans.He was a pivotal figure in the gay rights movement.

Early Mattachine Society

Hay & Gernreich, are the main characters of the play The Temperamentals by Jon Marans, with Thomas Jay Ryan playing Hay & out actor Michael Urie (with whom he shares this birthday) as Gernreich; after workshop performances in 2009 the play opened to rave reviews off Broadway in spring 2010.

Rudi Gernreich was the first to use cutouts in clothes. He was the first to use vinyl & plastic in clothes. He Introduced androgyny: men's suits & hats on women. He designed the first see-through clothes. Gernreich designed the first soft transparent bra the "no bra" bra that torpedoed the torpedos. He invented body clothes based on leotards & tights. He used hardware such as zippers, & dog leash clasps as decoration. He did the first designer jeans. He designed the 1st thong bathing suit. He was the first to design men's underwear for women.

Rudi Gernreich spent most of his productive life entirely aware that clothes were ideas in material form. His innovations embraced the new concept of lifestyle & in his soft bathing suits ,thongs, body clothes & tube dresses, in his unisex looks & signature, playful witty look, celebrated the removal of restriction & conformity.

Gernreich seemed to understand that a piece of clothing could embody a larger sense of freedom and liberation. It had to have something to do with his being gay, & of course being a dancer must have informed his vision of how a dressed body should float with naked ease in & around every situation.

I love 1960s conceptualist fashion. High Art fashion. Its not just fashion; it is a way of life. Life as theatre. Today in the stereotypical gay lifestyle & queer fashion is being appropriated by straight culture. Gay S&M fashion once an underground subculture, has gone mainstream. Slings are a home decor accessory. Rudi Gernreich was cutting edge, but today would he be cutting edge? The real queens of the past: Rudi Gernreich, Quentin Crisp, Joe Orton, Jean Genet, Truman Capote, Jean Cocteau were so brilliant, they defied fashion convention, they were not subservient to it. I hope that Rudi’s friend Walter Kennedy is lounging around his digs, enjoying his coffee in a purple thong or one of those famous unitards.

Head Was Born On This Day In 1887

Edith Head believed modesty was unbecoming & that you should have anything you wanted in life, but you had to be dressed for it. Edith head knew about dressing. The legendary designer saw all the Hollywood greats stripped down to their underwear or less. As the stars gazed upon themselves in the studio wardrobe mirrors, Head was the woman standing behind them, making them look impossibly glamorous while carefully avoiding glamour herself.

 

Hollywood's most famous & influential costume designer, as well as its most prolific, Head had a career that lasted 6 decades. She designed clothes for 1,131 films , an average of 35 a year, she dressed virtually every star who shimmered on screen in the golden age of movie making. Head was the last costume designer to be under contract to a major studio, Paramount. She was a woman who succeeded in a world, which in her day, was dominated by men.

Head wrote a pair of books: The Dress Doctor & How to Dress for Success, & played herself, giving a fashion show commentary in the 1955 film- Lucy Gallant, with Charlton Heston & Jane Wyman.

She could be a bit playful with the truth, taking credit for designs she had not created: Audrey Hepburn's little black dress in Sabrina & the Newman/Redford wardrobe for The Sting, for which she won an Oscar. Always discreet about the size & shape of the stars' bodies, she knew about all the skeletons in their closets, but she was never one to gossip.

Head knew about the intimate secrets of Mae West's vast bosom, Gloria Swanson's wide waist & tiny feet (size 2 1/2), & swan necked Audrey Hepburn's broad shoulders. She often boasted that she was a magician: “I accentuated the positive & camouflaged the rest".

Head would make the stars, with all their flaws, look a million dollars, & she influenced the way millions of women dressed too, as a designer for Vogue patterns at a time when home dressmaking was all the rage, although Head could not sew herself.

Her costume designs for films went global. The sarong she fashioned for Dorothy Lamour in the 1936 film The Jungle Princess, Head had her stitched into it, made the actress a star & was copied by every swimwear manufacturer in the US. It is still copied today.

For Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun (1951), Head accentuated the teenage star's bosom & tiny waist with a strapless, bouffant-skirted white ballgown, scattered with violets. It became the prom dress for American teenagers when it was copied by all the leading department stores. According to Head, Taylor had the most beautiful shoulders in Hollywood, so she created dresses for her to show them off.

Bette Davis: "Edith Head’s life was all about glamour, 60 years of it, in the most glamorous place in the world- Hollywood," Head designed the brown silk, sable trimmed cocktail dress Davis wore as Margo Channing in All About Eve, warning everyone as she swept down the staircase for the big party scene to fasten their seat belts because it was going to be a bumpy night. Davis tried on the finished gown the bodice & neckline were way too big. Head was horrified, but Davis pulled it off her shoulders & shook one shoulder sexily: “Doesn't it look better like this anyway?" Head won one of her 8 Oscars for that film. Davis later bought the dress for herself, because she loved it so much. Head: "There were 8 important men in my life, & they were all named Oscar."

Head was working as a language teacher at the Hollywood School for Girls in 1932 when she bluffed her way into Paramount's wardrobe department. She already had a B.A. from Berkeley & a master's from Stanford, but then went to study art at the Otis Art Institute & the Chouinard School. She was hired by the studio as a sketch artist, although the fashion drawings.

By 1938, she was head designer, working on every prestigious production the studio made, and left only in 1967, when she joined up with Universal. Head spent the remainder of her career here, thanks to her friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, including Tippi Hendren's smart green suit made of textured tweed that would snag easily during an avian attack.

Head's career was not without controversy. After winning her Oscar for The Sting, she was sued by the illustrator who really designed Redford & Newman's clothes. The truth about her design of Audrey Hepburn's little black dress emerged only after her death, when the Paris couturier Hubert de Givenchy quietly admitted that he'd come up with the frock that was copied everywhere & worn by a generation of women; Head had designed all the other costumes in the film.

Head also adored Grace Kelly & was upset when the actress slighted her by not inviting her to design the wedding dress when she got married to Prince Rainier of Monaco. She did create Princess Grace's grey going-away suit, though.

Head: "I regret never having dressed Marilyn Monroe, never designing uniforms for the Chicago Cubs, & being alone. It is much easier being remembered than trying to remember." It was an open secret in Hollywood that Edith Head was a lesbian.

In the Pixar film- The Incredibles, the personality & mannerisms of the film's fictional superhero costume designer- Edna Mode’s sense of style, round glasses, & assertive no-nonsense character are very are a direct homage to Head's legendary accomplishments & personality.

I am so in Junior High School, & I, of course, think it was fun to write the word- HEAD 24 times.

 

From Edith Head's HOW TO DRESS FOR SUCCESS:

 

How to attreact & keep a man:

1. Decide want kind of man you want.

2. Find out what kind of girls he likes.

3. Know what kind of fashions pleases him.

4. Don’t masquerade in clothes you hate just to attract a man. Be sure you are really, deep down inside, this kind of girl. If not, find another man!

5. Learn all you can about him: his hobbies, his interests, his likes, his dislikes.

6. Be interested in his interests.

7. Choose your wardrobe to please him & suit his way of life.

8. After you get him, stay the way you were & don’t relax into a post-marriage slump of careless marriage.

9. Look reasonably enticing in the morning & better at nightFrom her book- Dress for Success, Edith Head’s Success Formula For Dressing To Get A Man & Keep Him: