Come every winter and freezing cold temperatures, I return to a small segment of my wardrobe—a group of early 1980s sweaters and sweater dresses that always keep me cozy yet still stylistically like myself (and thankfully have continued to fit through pregnancy). My favorites—the ones I wear over and over again—are all by Gil Aimbez for Static, from one collection likely around 1983. Aimbez is another designer who was widely hyped in the 1970s but whose emphasis on producing more affordable clothes has meant that his name is widely forgotten now—similar in many ways to his contemporary Richard Assatly, who I wrote about previously (one, two and three).
As so little is available elsewhere on Gil Aimbez, this essay is long and divided into two parts—the second part will be sent out this later this week.
Gilbert Aimbez was born in Los Angeles in 1940 to a Mexican mother and Filipino father with Japanese ancestry. His father was a struggling schoolteacher and there was little money for extras for the thirteen children. “I was ninth in line and inherited nothing but hand-me-downs,” Aimbez told the Boston Globe in 1976. “When I was a teenager, I got very interested in new clothes because they seemed beyond my immediate reach.” Twenty-two years younger than his oldest sibling and sixteen years older than the youngest, he felt himself to be a “misfit”—finding escape from the family at Knottsberry Farm (“I ate up the makebelieve, I pretended I was part of the fantasy”) and the French Impressionist rooms at LACMA (“I got caught up in the colors. I didn’t know what I was looking at. I just went mad over the colors”). Gil attended Venice High School, where he was on the art staff of the yearbook. One day he passed a classroom where fashion illustration was being taught and was intrigued. “I wanted to join it, but the principal didn’t know what to do. They’d never had a boy in there before.” After much convincing, he was allowed to attend—and soon after Gil won a scholarship to study fashion at Chouinard Art Institute. Contestants submitted designs anonymously so “the judges never knew I was a boy.” He then matriculated to the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College where he studied patternmaking. In 1960, he won the sportswear award at the school’s annual Gold Thimble Award Fashion Show.
After graduation, Aimbez moved to New York in 1963: “If I couldn’t make it in New York, I knew I wouldn’t make it at all.” At a meeting with Geoffrey Beene, he was apparently told, “You’re too young. And a Californian wouldn’t understand the world of high fashion.” He did find work at Anne Klein Studio where he was “their freelance trouble shooter, working as an assistant and patternmaker to anyone who needed me—Jerry Feder, Hazel Haire, Jacques Tiffeau, so many designers.” Highly in demand, he was earning $600 a week in the late 1960s yet due to his ethnicity felt that he was given little recognition; as he told one journalist, “When I hit Seventh Avenue, my employers tended to keep me in the background. I gave them no resistance.” Klein he described as a mentor, telling WWD, “She gave me a great background in merchandising—and you learn from a master not to imitate.” To another journalist, he explained: “Anne Klein taught me that as long as you design for the fabric you’re with you can design anything and it will be in good taste as well as seasonless.”
Keeping his head down, Gil devoted himself completely to his work for AKS though it does appear he did have at least two contracts as a designer during that period. In 1965, Aimbez designed a boutique line for Suburban Heritage, a division of Hickey Coat Co. His life story was amplified and changed by the press; Women’s Wear Daily erroneously published, “A Japanese mother, Hawaiian father, born in San Francisco and trained in Paris, he has created a look to enhance the suede image the firm has built.” For them Aimbez designed eighteen “costumes” of fabric trimmed with brightly dyed suedes; the whole collection was designed around the idea of a “total look,” a series of coordinates, dresses, skirts, blouses, slacks, coats, or vests that could be worn in any number of combinations. Later that decade, Gil Aimbez was the designer for Jack Boykoff; I was unable to find any trade announcements regarding his hiring, so I do not know how long this partnership ran for, but Aimbez’s name was featured on ads only between November 1968 and August 1969.
After seven years at Anne Klein Studio, Aimbez moved on to assist Carol Horn; as he later told the Los Angeles Times, “I learned how to be a classic designer from Anne Klein, and then Carol Horn loosened me up.” During the summer of 1973, he was hired by Peter Clements to design for a contemporary line called Genre. The line had previously been designed by Mary Ann Restivo; Aimbez was brought in to give it a new look at a lower price point (the first resort collection was priced from $8.75 to $39.75). As he told WWD, “It was the first time I had designed my own collection. I didn’t know who I was—Anne Klein or Carol Horn—I had no identity.” The adjustment wasn’t easy: “The first collection booked $1 million in the showroom, but it was a disaster at retail. We were too early with the styling and sheer gauze fabric. It was one of the best things that could have happened to us. It made the future a real challenge, and we had to really evaluate the direction we were heading for.” The gauzy black halter dresses and harem pants inspired by a trip to Morocco hardly appear revolutionary, yet Aimbez later described that collection as “too far out for the consumer”; determined not to “play it safe and be basic” moving forward, he “decided to be updated, contemporary, but not off the wall.”
“Genre represents the young free liberated woman who is no longer afraid to be feminine and has enough daring to look like what she is—a woman.”
Gil’s collections were marked by a love of separates and dresses—easy pieces that could be worn together in a myriad of ways. As Bill Cunningham wrote in the Chicago Tribune, his first full collection for spring 1974 was “overflowing with new silhouettes, colors, and prints, put together with the designer’s belief that women should not be dictated to. Aimbez believes that the woman should put herself together with the designer giving her a choice.” By May that year, Genre was ringing $3 million in volume; Aimbez told WWD, “Contemporary women don’t want to pay designer prices but they do want fashion.” His designs were quickly marked out for their exquisite use of color and elegant handling of layering and different shapes, though his earliest collections were criticized for having too many looks and too many “sashes, braid, tasseled hoods, and other unnecessary gimmicks”—the more polite critics commented that he was “overflowing with ideas.” Aimbez’s fall 1974 collection was built entirely around peach, burgundy, and teal (including a plaid and artichoke print combining the shades); “the three colors may combine in a multi-print velvet evening topper over peach shirt and worn with evening pants in a contrast color, but they appear in every style. The point of it all is that the buyer can select elements from throughout the collection and know that they will blend together in her own individualistic mixture.” Capes, “BigSkirts” (a term invented by WWD), Cossack-style blouses and pants tucked into boots gave the whole collection an exotic, Russian air.
Taking a more American tack for spring 1975, Aimbez plastered the insignia for FDR’s 1933 National Recovery Act and the slogan “We Do Our Part” onto jumpsuits, T-shirts, middy blouses, and shirts. According to Gil, he was “looking through some history books to come up with something truly American… The NRA emblem caught my eye.” To maintain some authenticity, the eagle logo was embroidered versus printed, though it was changed from the original blue to black. For Aimbez, this collection was a response to the continual gloomy economic news of the mid-70s; “We’ve got to rebuild America—make people feel happy again… I’ve made a group of carpenter tops and carpenter jumpsuits to signify the rebuilding process.” These were just one element of a collection that included cotton dirndl skirts, smock tops over loose straight trousers, and much-copied tent-like sundresses with v-yokes. In the words of a March ad celebrating his upcoming visit to Washington DC’s Hecht's department store: “Gil Aimbez personifies an exciting combination of technical perfection and inspired design. The result? A refreshingly wearable new collection which Aimbez concisely defines as ‘true fashion at a moderate price.’”
For Fall, he looked to Edna St. Vincent Villay—handing out sheets of her poetry with a recitation over the music of live violins. The clothes though were described as “strictly 1975”: “His message is control-paired-down coats; frankly sexy jersey body dresses, usually long with halter necks; skirts, newest looking when teamed with quilted vests; lots of culottes; plus, most prophetic, the soft, pretty jumper over both sweaters and shirts. And throughout the collection, those easy, wear-everywhere big sporting dresses.” In a muted palette of rust, beige, greige, and brick with a bright accent of raspberry, it was effortless seventies sportswear. The Genre look for Aimbez meant “boiled down to simplicity with a special touch. Shape, cut and detail—that’s what is important to me.” The standout of the collection, a patterned long cardigan coat feels the most reminiscent of Millay while the quilted vests were reminiscent of traditional Chinese styles.
Aimbez’s heritage was a continual site of inspiration for him, lending even the simplest of his designs a subtle exotic flair; “I have strong Oriental influences, but my clothes are designed for the American woman with an American lifestyle.” His parents had pushed their thirteen children to become fully Americanized and speak only English at home; it wasn’t until he was an adult that Gil began to research and reflect on his Filipino, Japanese and Mexican inheritance. As he later recalled, “I realized that I had lost my identity. I wondered if millions of Americans were feeling the same loss, the same lack of self-expression. Instead of pursuing the individuality of the minorities I represented, I had been blurred.” When he started designing for Genre, he took it as an opportunity to start incorporating elements of his and other cultures—“I decided that fate was opening a door. At last, I could be true to myself.” In 1976 he even began making sweaters in the Philippines, using a Japanese acrylic called Vonnel.
“Women don’t care about constant change in fashion. They are too smart. They can spot a phony fad. They are looking for comfortable, low-cost, long-lasting looks.”
The Asian influences returned the following spring, most vividly in a group of Indonesian batiks used on apron dresses worn over narrow wrap pants that had “buyers applauding.” Other styles included lean tunics over pants or culottes, caftan-inspired jumpsuits, and walking shorts—often wrapped and tied with “ethnic” belts and sashes. Loose robes, drawstring pants, and easy sundresses in sheer striped cotton gauze had an element of Morocco to them, though Aimbez’s love for the designs of Claire McCardell also came through in his ingenious ways of wrapping. Described by the LA Times as “gauzy, wrinkly no-color clothes” with “ethnic touches,” Gil was quick to point out that they were not a fad: “I’m willing to admit there is nothing new about fashion. And that’s why we’re updating centuries-old fashions right now to fit into today’s life-style. Caftans, burnooses, vests are part of traditional, functional dressing.” He continued, “I don’t want to make you look like a peasant. Or a boy. Be comfortable and look like a woman.” Judging by Genre ringing $5 million a year in sales, women were responding to his affordable, ethnically inflected vision of womanhood.
Work was the entirety of Aimbez’s life. He traveled continually—mainly to visit clothing, textile, and accessories factories and sometimes for inspiration—leaving him with no spare time. “I literally work seven days a week—I’m so into the business… I love to cook and I used to entertain at least twice a week—but I’ve had to give it up. I used to run, play baseball and sail and did a lot more reading, painting and poetry writing.” Interviewers commonly described him as outwardly shy yet hiding a warm and friendly personality. He was said to hate having his photo taken; “They never capture my true soul so I don’t allow many to be taken.” For sixteen years he lived in a “tiny, treasure-filled” apartment that he described as being “controlled clutter,” filled with old art books and antiques that proved the basis of many of his design ideas. Gil only moved after several years of success in late 1978 to a duplex penthouse with a terrace just off Fifth Avenue and East 63rd Street.
Coming from a patternmaking background, Aimbez started by draping his designs on a live model instead of sketching. He felt that he could take a fad (like “ethnics”) and elevate it above those made by other contemporary designers through high-quality workmanship, adding a certain edge to his work. In his words, “That’s where couture training is helping me. There’s a need for these looks and giving them sophistication, fit and quality.” His understanding of patternmaking and world travels allowed him to “use a Greek sleeve with an Afghanistan neckline with a Russian bodice,” creating “an alternative form of dressing.”
More to come later this week….