Rediscovering Gil Aimbez II

From Sportswear to Sweaters

Earlier this week I introduced you to fashion designer Gil Aimbez and brought you up through his spring/summer 1976 collection. Today I cover the rest of his career.

Gil Aimbez with models dressed in his clothes at Bullock’s department store. Photo by Larry Bessell for the Los Angeles Times, February 11, 1976.

“I believe that, to the wearer, clothes should be stimulating, sometimes perhaps amusing, and always comfortable. It should be the woman who wears the clothes, and not vice-versa.”

Aimbez described himself not as a technician, nor a designer: “I interpret what is today for an active person with an active career and life to maintain. My customer knows quality and looks for wardrobe investments.” His 1976 collections were full of pinafore dresses and knit ponchos and hooded capes and tabards, layered on top of more common garment styles. Altogether the effect could be a little much—of fall 1976, Bernadine Morris wrote, “The Gil Aimbez collection for Genre is practically all fantasy, running from pioneer-woman ankle-length dresses over ruffled pantaloons to blanket coats that look warm enough to keep Eskimos cozy. His point-hooded monk’ robes over tunic-length tabards have a cathedral quality—somebody called them ‘cathedral chic’”—but each look was designed to be effortlessly pulled apart into easy-to-wear separates. WWD declared that this collection “rockets him to star status,” with Peter Clements (Aimbez’s business partner) stating that orders were 2.5 times larger than the previous fall. Even Bonwit Teller’s Kal Ruttenstein (soon to join Bloomingdale’s, where he would become known as the “nation's most influential fashion director”) said that “If [Aimbez] opened his collection in Paris, he would have already been internationally acclaimed.”

Aimbez’s “Cathedral chic” for fall 1976. Newsday, June 8, 1976.

Gil Aimbez and models in his fall 1976 collection. Photos by Hal Davis for Essence, November 1976.

Hecht’s ad, Baltimore Sun, October 3, 1976.