The Cincinnati Art Museum’s wonderful current exhibition The Total Look: The Creative Collaboration Between Rudi Gernreich, Peggy Moffitt and William Claxton mentions that one early influence on the visionary fashion designer Gernreich was Bonnie Cashin, who created quietly avant-garde women’s sportswear and whose reputation has only grown since her death in 2000.
It turns out that University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning has a collection of almost 200 pieces by Cashin, a gift from Ohio State University. The pieces were among a larger donation given to OSU by Phil Sills, whose Sills & Co. produced Cashin-designed fashions from 1952 until the late 1970s.
On Tuesday, DAAP students put together a one-night exhibit of a dozen pieces from its collection in the Total Look gallery, so attendees could see how her tweed with leather and suede fashions look alongside Gernreich’s far more radical designs. They hold up well — the earthy colors, the bold use of plaid, the turn-lock brass closures, a jacket with a built-in coin purse in a front pocket.
UC has put information about the collection online here. Meanwhile, The Total Look is on display through May 24 and deserves to be seen by all.
This article appears in Apr 15-21, 2015.