Trina Turk

Jonathan and I attended a dinner in honor of “The Total Look” at MOCA Pacific Design Center a few weekends ago. The show documents the creative collaboration between groundbreaking LA designer Rudi Gernreich, his muse Peggy Moffitt, and her husband, photographer William Claxton.

(L to R) Self portrait of my Peggy Moffitt inspired makeup by Agostina Lombardo, Accent nail + invite, TT in vintage Rudi Gernreich with Peggy and William’s son Christopher Claxton, and Peggy Moffitt looking cool as ever in a black ruffled rib sweater dress,  TT outside MOCA PDC.

I shopped my closet and found the perfect thing to wear— a vintage Rudi G silver/gold metallic knit sweater dress purchased years ago in Seattle. 

All the clothing on display is from Peggy’s personal collection. Cameron Silver’s selections reveal the best aspects of Rudi’s work—simple shapes, amazing graphic prints, a gorgeous sense of color and pattern mixing, and a modernity that often still works for now. In 1966, Rudi was the first designer to do a lower priced collaboration. He created an exclusive collection for Montgomery Ward, and pioneered the idea of great fashion design for the masses.

An anecdote excerpted from The Rudi Gernreich Book by Peggy Moffitt and William Claxton demonstrates the clash of the New York fashion Old Guard vs. Rudi’s west coast unconstructed, modernist designs. RG won a Coty Fashion Critics award in June of 1963. “As a protest against Gernreich’s win, Norman Norell returned his own Coty award, telling WWD ‘It no longer means a thing to me. I can’t bear to look at it anymore. I saw a photo of a suit of Rudi’s and one lapel of the jacket was shawl and the other was notched—well!’” Some things never change—the NY fashion establishment still takes itself way too seriously.

I would love to time travel back to the ’60s to hang out with Rudi, William and Peggy in LA for a few days. The Los Angeles art scene was in its influential infancy, with the Ferus Gallery being the first to show Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can paintings. (They were priced at $100) Artists and musicians crisscrossed with Hollywood types and Rudi’s circle to create what must have been some great parties and openings. Rudi’s old studio at 8460 Santa Monica Blvd, described as a “khaki colored square stucco building with 12 foot doors”, has sadly has been obscured/embellished with some bad 1990s curly ironwork. I wonder if the current tenant knows about that location’s storied history…