PEGGY MOFFITT

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Peggy Moffitt, as model and muse to designer Rudi Gernreich, was a style icon of the sixties. Born in California in 1939 she was a 60s style icon, the premier model and muse for fashion designer Rudi Gernreich. She developed a signature style that featured heavy, Kabuki-like makeup and an asymmetrical hair cut inspired by Vidal Sassoon. Her unique look became an icon of the 1960s fashion scene.

Peggy’s dramatic makeup and Vidal Sassoon’s five point asymmetrical haircut.

Peggy Moffitt and fashion designer Rudi Gernreich in Paris, 1965. Photo by William Klaxton.

Rudi Gernreich introduced the single-piece topless monokini. When the first photograph of the swimsuit was published in Womens Wear Daily on June 1962, it generated a great deal of controversy internationally.

Rudi Gernreich’s freeing of the breasts was a social statement, somehow part of the emancipation of women, and a portent of the unfettering of the breast by the women’s movement in the 1970s. Rudi invented the ‘no bra’ bra in 1964, a soft nylon bra with no padding or boning in which breasts assumed their natural shape, rather than being molded into an aesthetic ideal.

Peggy Moffit modeling for designer Rudy Gernreich.

Here in the film Qui êtes vous, Polly Maggoo? directed by photographer William Klein in 1966.

Kleini’s time at Vogue was the inspiration for this razor-edged satire of high fashion and haute couture industry starring Dorothy McGowan, a model who, legend has it, was discovered by a fashion scout among a crowd of teenagers awaiting the arrival of the Beatles at Kennedy Airport. Grayson Hall shines as the brilliantly bitchy Miss Maxwell, a magazine editor based on Vogue’s Diana Vreeland.

With model Twiggy. “Those pictures are the second shoot Twiggy ever did. And the photographer asked me to help her. I’m trying to show her about light and I decided oh, I’ll be Madonna and she’ll be my Baby Jesus.” – Peggy Moffitt .

Rudi Gernreich and Peggy Moffitt Being Photographed by Jeanloup Sieff, Paris, 1965.

On the set of the film Blow Up, 1966. Blow-Up is filmed in London during the sixties. David Hemmings leading movie-character, a fashion photographer, is based on David Bailey, who was the it photographer at the time. Other people starring in the movie are: Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle and sixties model Veruschka. Also appearing in the movie are Jane Birkin, Peggy Moffitt and The Yardbirds.

On Blow Up set.

Peggy Moffitt, Kite Dress by Rudi Gernreich, Sitting, 1967.

Peggy Moffitt in Sumo Caftan by Rudi Gernreich, New York, 1967.

Peggy Moffitt in Rudi Gernreich Sorceress Evening Dress, New York City, 1967.

Central Park New York, 1967.

Peggy Moffitt in Silver Pierrot by Rudi Gernreich, New York City, 1967.

Peggy Moffitt, Silver and White Evening Dress by Rudi Gernreich, 1966.

With James Coburn in the film Our Man Flint, 1966. Dress by Gernreich. James Coburn stared as super-spy Derek Flint in this action comedy which takes James Bond series and shifts it into high gear. Flint is an ultra-sophisticated operative of international intelligence agency Z.O.W.I.E.