“Fashion, as we know it, is dead,” the Austrian-born American designer Rudi Gernreich proclaimed in 1971. “In the new environment of the future, people will accept their bodies. Clothes will be utilitarian, organic, and minimal. It will free us to think of more important things.” Gernreich might have been better at provocation than prophecy, but he forever remains fashion’s envelope- (and button-) pushing philosopher. He’s the guy who once staged a show at Watts Towers, was photographed with the likes of Ed Ruscha, Judy Chicago, and Frank Gehry on the steps of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and gave the world much to ponder in 1964 when he introduced the monokini, a topless bathing suit that Pope Paul VI (whose own sartorial style was considerably more maximalist) banned Catholics from wearing. With blocky geometric patterns playing off the organic flow of his fabrics, Gernreich (who died in 1985) brought a bit of Bauhaus, Wiener Werkstätte, and Op Art to fashion design, along with social conscience: he’s considered a godfather of the L.G.B.T.-rights movement and his work was not afraid to tangle with big issues—body-consciousness, gender, identity, sexual politics. Oh, and he invented the thong.

Given our 2019 preoccupations, perhaps it’s no surprise that we’re having a Gernreichian moment. On May 9, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (following the Costume Institute Gala on May 6), an exhibition featuring some of Gernreich’s iconic designs. That same day, Los Angeles’s Skirball Cultural Center will launch “Fearless Fashion: Rudi Gernreich.” This colorful retrospective will include 80 ensembles, as well as an array of ephemera, oral histories, and Basic Black, the 1967 short film shot by William Claxton and starring Gernreich muse (and Claxton spouse) Peggy Moffitt, along with two of the designer’s go-to models, Ellen Harth and Léon Bing. In 1968, the Los Angeles Times declared Bing—whose wit is as sharp as her cheekbones—“a girl as well as a movement.” She chatted with Vanity Fair about the Aquarian Age designer whose vision still feels like the future.

Vanity Fair: How did you come to work with Rudi Gernreich?

Léon Bing: I guess it was 1966. I was doing that big Metropolitan Museum blowout they do every year, where everyone gets into their highest drag [the Costume Institute Gala]. They did a fashion show with clothes from the museum’s archives, and the dress they chose for me was antebellum. It didn’t have a hoop, but it had a train the size of the Super Chief. Another model said to me, “Rudi Gernreich is looking for someone who looks like a spy. I think you should go see him.” At that time Rudi didn’t have a showroom in New York; he was at a hotel and showed at his suite. So I went over there and it was just quick—end of story. I was the spy he was looking for.

What was it like working with him?

He was a perfectionist and so am I, so we got along really well. Sometimes he would put a sample on me and I’d say, “I’m not wearing this!” And he’d say, “Well, don’t you like it?” And I’d say, “Obviously not. It’s hideous!” And he would take it out of the line! We laughed a great deal. I’m deadpan and Rudi was, too. . . . He could make me laugh so hard—and I can’t laugh too hard because I’ll pee. And he once made me do that in a taxi.

I once said to him, “Do you just wake up in the middle of the night and start sketching?” He was always sketching. And he said, “No, not really. But when I get an inspiration on the street I start sketching.” That’s where he took his inspiration—on the street from young people, boys and girls.

Rudi was renowned for stretching the boundaries of fashion—the topless bathing suit, for example. Did you ever feel like he was taking it too far with you?

The only time I said “no thank you” was when he did that unisex thing Life magazine, in which a young man and a young woman were to shave their heads—and pubic regions—and pose naked in unisex caftans. I said, “No way and no day. I have a little girl in school.” To say nothing of the heart attack in the morning when I would awaken with no hair!

You wrote in your memoir, Swans and Pistols, that he “twisted the arm of high fashion until it yelped out a squeal of sexuality.”

It’s a giggle, at most. But he loved women. He wanted to make them both wonderful looking and at the same time comfortable with it. I remember a dress I had, which is now in a museum. It was a long dress for evening made of that wonderful silk jersey that clings. It had a plunging neckline, to mid-body. And the neckline had a thin strip of fine kid skin and there were three industrial springs that were horizontal on the kid that went across the breasts. And it was just wonderful. It got so many looks when I wore it. Of course, I took it home; I said, “I’ve got to have this.” And wherever I took it, including the Academy Awards one year, that dress got more glances than all of the froufrou stuff. That was often the case with Rudi’s clothes. Not because they were strange—they were beautiful. And they were all so comfortable.

Did Rudi want his models to perform any specific way?

He didn’t care how you modeled. He didn’t insist on little twirling turns, which were so popular then. They were called Dior turns. I was afraid if I even tried, I’d twirl myself off the runway into some editor’s lap! So my style of modeling was to walk straight down to the end of the runway, make one turn, walk straight back, and disappear.

Tell me about shooting Basic Black. It’s considered one of the first fashion videos.

Well, afterwards we went to a deli on Houston Street. I ordered blintzes and when they came they were just drenched in oil. And so when the waiter came back to say, “How is everything?” I said, “Please give my compliments to the mechanic!” And Rudi just roared with laughter.

In the 80s, you started writing, eventually becoming the author of Do or Die, a hard-hitting chronicle of gang life in L.A. Did the example of Rudi’s creativity influence you as a writer?

That’s an interesting question. I think unconsciously it did. He’d already retired at that point and was making gourmet soups that were in the markets. He even made me tripe, which is my favorite dish and makes everyone else want to vomit. But when I told him that I was beginning to write, he was beyond encouraging. He thought that was a brilliant change in career. Oreste [Pucciani, Gernreich’s partner and a French professor at U.C.L.A.] was beside himself, he loved it so much. . . . I don’t believe in having a career as a model and then resting on those rather dubious laurels for the rest of your life.

Do you still have any Rudi Gernreich pieces in your closet?

Yes, I have one. I kept a pinstripe tunic from the 60s, in men’s wear—gray, with a high neck and big brass buttons on the sleeves. And that’s it. I donated everything else to different museums.

Rudi surely would have approved of the generosity of that gesture.

Rudi was delighted by everything, but he was sometimes too generous. I remember in his studio on Santa Monica Boulevard, Liza Minnelli came in—I wasn’t there—and the dress she wanted was one of my samples. And when I came in the next day, Rudi said, “Oh! Liza Minnelli is going to wear your” whatever dress it was. And I said, “No, she isn’t! I don’t want her sweat on my dress!” He said, “Dahhrling . . . she’s going to wear it to such a wonderful event and it’s Liza Minnelli!” And I said, “I don’t give a fuck if it’s Albert Einstein; that dress isn’t being worn.” And that was the end of that. I mean, had it been Gertrude Stein, I would have said yes.

Rudi was everything one would hope he would be. He was very kind. He was very funny. And incredibly intelligent. He was extraordinary in all ways. . . . I remember the day he turned 50. He was down. I came to the studio and I said to him, “Happy birthday, sweetheart!” And he said, “Ohhh, don’t mention it. I’m 50! I’m no longer an enfant terrible.” I said to him, “You’ll always be that.”

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