Resort 1968, yellow, blue and white cotton print blouse and pants worn with red, navy, and white cotton print shorts. The hat is silk.
Resort 1968, with Leon Bing wearing silk print "kimono" dresses with metallic brocade "obis" and vinyl sashes.
FUN CITY
In the late 1960's, New York City was going through great turmoil and was becoming a place that people were frightened to visit. The Chamber of Commerce decided to run an ad campaign showing what a delightful place it was, and they used the slogan "Fun City". The ads with this slogan were everywhere, in magazines, on buses and billboards. Everywhere you looked you saw "Fun City".
About this time, Bill and I came back from Europe. We decided to stay in New York and found an apartment on West 57th Street. This had one horrible side-effect for me. Instead of walking home after work with Rudi to the Algonquin Hotel, I had to go it alone through Times Square and the dreaded 42nd Street. Naturally, I would grab a cab if Ifound one, but I almost never did.
On one memorable occasion, I was standing at 42nd and 7th Avenue waiting for the light when I noticed the group of people on the other side of the street that I would have walkthrough. There were midnight cowboys, prostitutes, transvestites, dope dealers, people covered in tatoos, people with bones through their noses and in the center a dwarf with no legs. He was sitting on a small board mounted on roller-skate wheels. Averting my eyes, I started crossing the street, whereupon the dwarf started pointing up at me and yellingtothecrowd, "LOOK AT HER. LOOK AT HER. HOW FREAKY!"
Just another glamorous day in the life of a fashion model in "Fun City".
Resort 1968, the "Zouaves": upper left, beige linen tunic with white cotton pique bubble skirt; upper right, beige linen suit with taupe belt.
Resort 1968, the "Zouaves": beige and off-white windowpane plaid linen tunic and bloomers with white cotton blouse.
Resort 1968, from a wool-knit group with transparent vinyl inserts. This dress appeared with Rudi on the cover of TIME magazine.
Seventh Avenue
Tw3o tackily dressed buyers from a small-town store wandered into the showroom in New York the week that Rudi was on the cover of Time. They went up to Rudi, who happened to be standing there, and demanded, "Show us what ya got in jeweled sweaters." Ah, fame.
Resort 1968, from a wool-knit group with transparent vinyl inserts. This dress appeared with Rudi on the cover of TIME magazine.
Resort 1968, black wool-knit bikini with transparent vinyl straps.
Haute Comfort
Some of Rudi's critics accused him of producing poorly made clothes. They weren't poorly made. They were beautifully made. But they weren't made like couture. Rudi didn't cover a snap in organza if it didn't need to be covered. The difference in the two schools of thought was brought home to me when I was being photographed for the Paris collections and I wore a caftan from one of the great Parisian houses. It was quite beautiful on the hanger, but when I put it on, I discovered that inside this loose shape was a corseted sheath dress with lead weights hanging from the inner dress. The weights slapped my ankles when I walked, and the inner dress was so constricted that I couldn't walk-only mince.
To me the whole point of a caftan is freedom. Men have been striding across the desert for thousands of years in them looking marvelous and being comfortable. There is beauty and sensuality in comfort; that is the caftan's appeal. I'm sure many a seduction has taken place while wearing a caftan. The advocates of couture-style dressmaking (almost always men) have said to me for years that such and such a dress is wonderful because it is so stiff and constructed that it can stand up on the floor all by itself. My reply has always been, "Let it. It doesn't need me to hold it up, and I don't need the torture it will give me."
Here is one of Rudi's caftans. It was made of silk and lined in China silk. That's all. It slipped and slid around the naked body and felt like a thousand baby's hands caressing me.
Resort 1968, black-and-white silk checkerboard caftan with yellow dots.
Resort 1968, black chiffon cocktail dress with bubble skirt worn with feathered earrings.
Resort 1968, wool-knit swimsuit and leg coverings inspired by surfwear.