Finale for Fashion?

Fashion Designer Rudi Gernreich, 47, is best known for designing almost nothing at all: the topless bathing suit. Although he sold 3,000 copies at $25 apiece, he did not really mean to market it. He made the suit mainly as a "statement" in support of the "liberated look" of the late 1960s--a look he further promoted with his No-Bra bra, clinging knit minidresses, "Swiss cheese" swimsuits and see-through blouses. All that pioneering so exhausted Rudi that he treated himself to a year's sabbatical in order to restore his flagging energies; he convalesced comfortably in Tangier, Paris and the Hollywood hills. Now Gernreich is back on the scene, a radical turned revolutionary. No longer content with trying to change fashion, he seems determined to do away with it.

In the main showroom of his elegant Los Angeles salon last week, Rudi readied his forces for the first big assault: a preview showing of his 1970 line to be staged at the Hancock Park home of Socialite Eugenia Butler. The first order of business was to shave the heads and bodies of his two models. "Hair hides a lot," explained Gernreich, "and body hair is too sexual. I don't want to confuse the idea of freedom with sexual nakedness. Openness and honesty call for no covering of any kind." For Thomas Broom, 30, Rudi's male model, the prospect of all-over alopecia held no horror: "I've wanted to shed my hair for a long time. I have this theory that when I do, I will shed other things too--maybe my inhibitions." But Renee Holt, 22, approached her barber's appointment with anxiety. Fondly caressing her long golden tresses, she said bravely: "In a way, long hair is a crutch for a woman. Once the hair is short, one may develop other things, like the intellect. But I have been thinking what my father will say."

Disposable Underwear. An hour later, Tom and Renee emerged from under their barbers' aprons and entered separate bathrooms to shave off every vestige of body hair. "You look great, just great!" gushed Rudi when they returned. A cosmetician applied a thin coat of flesh-colored makeup to their naked bodies, and it was time to get into their costumes, such as they were. Both models dressed identically in black-and-white monokinis, covered with white knit bell-bottom trousers and rib-length black-and-white tank tops. Then, while photographers snapped pictures and Gernreich gave cues and directions, the models rehearsed their act for the show. Off came the tank tops. Down dropped the trousers. The monokinis slid slowly to the floor. After stepping to one side, Tom and Renee stood silently like statues --or inmates of a concentration camp.

Dramatic as the rehearsal was, the actual show this week should have even greater impact. Plans call for the two models, wearing their unisex clothing, to mingle with 200 formally attired, champagne-sipping guests on the spacious first floor of the Butler mansion. After taking off their tank tops, Broom and Holt will linger awhile and then ascend a circular staircase to strip to the buff in full view of the onlookers. "It's a shock thing," Gernreich admits.

The show is designed to demonstrate graphically Gernreich's notion that "fashion as we know it is coming to an end," that designers should no longer be artists but anonymous editors. "The stronger the signature of the designer," he says, "the less acceptable his clothes will be." During the 1970s, adds Rudi, "basic clothing will become much more understated. Our aesthetics will change and focus more on the body than on its adornment. Nudity will be much more prevalent." People will pay less attention to their looks, he says, because they simply will not have the time or inclination for self-indulgence. "The problems of overpopulation, pollution and so forth are going to intrude in some way on all our lives and change our everyday involvements. Clothes will just not be that important any more."

Whatever utilitarian clothes are worn, Gernreich predicts, will be mostly mailorder items "from catalogues or off the television set"; even underwear will become a casualty: "I think that if there is any kind of underwear at all, it will be disposable. We will wear it once and just throw it away."

Sexual Honesty. Gernreich is also convinced that unisex is the wave of the future. In his 1970 line, he has already carried that concept through to its logical (as far as he is concerned) conclusion. He has eliminated all sexual variations in the clothes by designing miniskirts, leotards and pants suits for men and women alike. Men in miniskirts? "Sure," says Rudi diffidently. "Is a boy in a skirt any the less a boy?" By wearing the same clothes, he insists, male and female only "enhance" their bodily differences; by promoting uniformity of dress, he argues, he is also promoting an honest, rational attitude toward sex. "Sexual honesty involves only the body itself," he says. "Sexuality should not be judged on the basis of clothes. It is a spiritual thing--and a physical thing."

Not that Gernreich wants to eradicate all differences in clothing: old folks, he thinks, ought to show their age. "There should be a limit to a person's trying to look younger than he is," says Rudi. "People simply have to get over their youth hang-up and accept their advancing years as a natural process of life." For senior citizens, Rudi has designed boldly patterned, caftan-like robes with stylish simplicity and stunning colors that may well win him more admirers --young and old alike--than his masculine miniskirts and barbered bodies.

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