Rudi Gernreich invented the thong bathing suit as a political response to nudity bans, designing minimal coverage for all genders. Venice Beach experienced a brief nude-bathing craze in July 1974, fueled by hippies and the absence of explicit nudity prohibitions, until media attention led to police intervention and an ensuing ban. Gernreich emphasized freeing bodies rather than sexualizing them, asserting that body liberation would address society's sexual hang-up. Gernreich fled Nazi Austria in 1938 as a Jewish teenager and later lived in Los Angeles, where he repeatedly challenged fashion taboos.
Two narrow straps that sit just above the hipbone, their edges cutting into sun-tanned flesh: the thong. These days, thanks to the revival of fashion from the 2000s, it seems to be everywhere: sticking out of low-rise jeans, shimmering underneath transparent beach dresses or revealing derrieres on the beach.
July 1974: Los Angeles' last summer of nude bathing "Everyone was nude," a lifeguard recalls in the newspaper LA Times. In the summer of 1974, Venice Beach became a sea of bare bottoms. Nobody knows exactly how the famous beach in Los Angeles became a popular location for naturists, but hippies readily popularized the nudist craze, taking advantage of the fact that there was no explicit ban on nudity yet. But the naked summer dream didn't last long: First came the press, then the police. After nudity made headlines, Los Angeles promptly banned it altogether.
What does this have to do with the thong? Rudi Gernreich, an Austrian-born designer who lived in LA, rebelled against the ban by creating a tiny piece of fabric for all genders that covered only the bare minimum. The designer was not interested in sexualizing bodies. On the contrary: He wanted to set them free. "The liberation of the body will cure society of its sexual hang-up," Gernreich once said. It wasn't the first time he broke taboos with fashion.
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