- Designer
- Rudi Gernreich
Austria, active United States, California, Los Angeles, 1922-1985 - Title
- Woman's Dress
- Date Made
- circa 1953
- Medium
- Wool knit
- Dimensions
- Center back length: 35 3/4 in. (90.81 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.73.102.6
- Collecting Area
- Costume and Textiles
- Curatorial Notes
As a boy in Vienna, Gernreich spent countless hours sketching high fashion in his aunt’s dress shop. In California, following a career in dance, he based his fashion designs on the beauty of the natural body in motion. Renouncing garment construction methods of the 1950s that sculpted the female body into an idealized hourglass silhouette, Gernreich created this knitted dress, utilizing the inherent elasticity of the material to mold the body without boning, padding, cutting, or further tailoring.
(California Design, 1930–1965: "Living in a Modern Way," 2011-12)
- Selected Bibliography
- Kaplan, Wendy, ed. California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011.
- Kaplan, Wendy, ed. Living in a Modern Way: California Design, 1930-1965. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013.
- Selected Exhibition History
- California Design, 1930–1965: "Living in a Modern Way". October 1, 2011 - June 3, 2012
