Richard Simmons II: Rudi Gernreich & Simpatico
A Foray into Jewelry Design
When I first started researching Richard Simmons, I hadn’t expected that—pre-exercise, pre-fame—he had designed a line of jewelry successful enough to be profiled in newspapers and used by Rudi Gernreich. Whether due to faulty memory or for other reasons, Richard rewrote when and how this fits into his history.
As I laid out in my previous email, Richard Simmons says that he returned to the United States in early 1970 after being called up in the draft lottery. He lived and worked in New York before moving to Dallas to be a traveling beauty consultant for Dina Merrill cosmetics (part of Coty). As his plane descended into LAX on his first visit to Los Angeles (likely in early 1972), he wrote that he “got this strange feeling” and knew “without a doubt, that there was another angel waiting for me in this city.” After completing his seminars for Coty at Bullock's, Simmons called in his resignation—choosing to start over in LA without a job, apartment, or anything.
Within a few months, 24-year-old Simmons had launched a jewelry line alongside 21-year-old Terry Tullgren. Named “Simpatico,” Simmons’ line was developed around the idea of unisex cloisonné enamel pins of 14-caret gold, with adaptable backs so they could also be worn as pendants. Using his art background, the premier collection featured simple shapes of bars, triangles, circles, and rainbows, in addition to his first anatomical designs: “cloisonnéd stylized versions of hearts and ribs,” as seen in the image below.
By the time of Simpatico’s first newspaper profile in September 1972, it was supposedly already a success—“within one month he has sold 156 stores, including in Los Angeles places as diverse as Judy’s, Bullock’s Wilshire, Eric Ross, Robinson’s and Holly’s Harp…And already, Simmons’ “Simpatico” jewelry is taking on the nation via seven resident buying offices in Los Angeles.” LA Times writer Beth Ann Krier revealed how “the appeal of the jewelry is that is a simple thing done well and priced downright amazingly”—the pins sold for $6 retail. She was also the first of thousands to come to be drawn in by Simmons’ fantastical stories of his life; the article starts not with the jewelry (that doesn’t come in until the sixth paragraph), but with Simmons’ tales:
Before you learn about the jewelry nearly every store in town has been snatching up, Richard Simmons talks of Fellini and yogurt and asks for a Seven-Up. He is not all here just now, having lost 123 pounds in two and a half months on nothing but homemade yogurt.
“Fat boys just don’t make it in America,” he explains.”
The headline to this piece: “Simpatico Selling Like Diet Drinks.”
Yet, as I mentioned earlier, Simmons wrote in his memoir, Still Hungry After All These Years: My Story, that he lost over a hundred pounds while in Italy in 1969 and kept it off when he returned to America early the following year. Due to the series of events that happened when he arrived back in the US and how they happened (working at an ultra-fashionable restaurant, a top customer hiring him as a beauty consultant, and successfully touring the country selling cosmetics), I believe that it is more likely that he did have his major weight loss in Italy, versus in 1972 in Los Angeles as he proclaims in this interview. The crash diet and 100+ pounds loss were enfolded into his myth, along with Fellini and husky modeling for “Luv Boy” jeans, and therefore could be shifted and rearranged as he saw fit—here serving as a hook to capture a journalist’s attention.
Simpatico’s pin apparently also captured Rudi Gernreich’s attention; Krier reveals that he “liked the pure geometry of the line so much he’s having pieces made in special colors to be shown on his upcoming spring collection for Harmon Knitwear.” When his spring/summer 1973 collection paraded down the runway in his NYC showroom on October 17th, 1972, almost every outfit was topped off with Simpatico’s enamel pins. Gernreich described the collection as primarily a group of “easy daytimes” based on “classic lines,” consisting of “separate components that can be put together at random, interchangeable, and that rely for distinctiveness on the use of color or fabric and pattern.” Focusing on clothes that would easily slot into a modern woman’s lifestyle, he did allow himself “one touch of deliberate decoration—cloisonné pins reminiscent of military decorations and ribbons, in the same colors and patterns as the clothes themselves and placed in clusters.”
Only one of the reviews of the show and none of the follow-up interviews reveal the source of these pins; they are simply categorized as part of Gernreich’s total vision. It is not clear if these pins were offered by Gernreich at retail, either included with the garments or as additional pieces. In April 1973 Gernreich held a special showing of the collection for the LA press—photos in a LA Times article clearly show the pins, while the text mentions that Helft’s department store was carrying the whole collection, making it possible that the Simpatico x Rudi Gernreich collaboration was retailed there. As the pins were such a small element in the collection—one after the peak of Gernreich’s fame and notoriety—none of them are saved in museum collections, nor are they shown or discussed in any book on Gernreich’s designs.
All of the above took place in Simmons’ first months in Los Angeles when he had no (known) other work, but these pins fit very differently into Simmons’ official account of his life. According to Simmons’ memoir, he came up with the idea to make jewelry while working as a waiter at Derrick’s; as the restaurant opened in late November 1972, this is untrue. As Simmons tells it:
All of a sudden, it occurred to me: I'll make jewelry. I'd had a course in art school where we had to make parts of the body look like art. So that's what I did now. I designed jewelry pins and charms in the shape of a heart, liver, spleen, pancreas, kidney, lungs, and a special 24-carat-gold uterus with opal ovaries. Really, I did. It was anatomical jewelry. I found a factory downtown that could make them from my designs. Then, from a jewelry shop in the neighborhood, I got a velvet-lined traveling case so I could display all the pins, and I took the case to the restaurant. After a table had finished dessert and was sipping coffee, I would bring the case over and sit down.
One of the diners would ask, "What's that?"
I'd take out a pin out and say, "That's a liver."
"A liver? Oh, what a lovely liver."
"And look, I also have a spleen!"
"A spleen?" She'd turn to another diner at the table and say, "Look, Doris. It's a spleen. Isn't it adorable?"
And then I would sell a liver and a spleen. After a while, practically everyone at Derek's was wearing one of my anatomical pins or charms.
I was also infatuated with the way circles looked, so I designed cloisonné rainbow circles, and they became very popular with the Derek's [sic] crowd. One evening, the very famous designer Rudi Gernreich came in. He spotted my rainbow pins on some of the customers and instantly liked them. When he found out that I had designed them, he walked over to me and said, "I love that circle you designed. I'll need about forty-seven thousand of them. I want to put one on every dress that I'm doing in my new line." I said to myself, "This is good. I may have stumbled onto something here." I got busy manufacturing those pins.
While Simmons’ timeline is incorrect, it is distinctly possible that he did use Derrick’s as an opportunity for sales; this excerpt also appears to provide evidence that the pins did go into mass production for Gernreich. No mention is made of the line being called “Simpatico,” nor of Simmons having a business partner. While it isn’t clear exactly what roles Simmons and Tullgren held, by March 1973 Simmons no longer seems to be involved in Simpatico. Tullgren was interviewed by the Arizona Republic that month, with no mention at all of Simmons; similarly, when WWD covered Simpatico in July and September, Tullgren was described as the sole “designer/owner.” These articles display a new vision for Simpatico’s designs, perhaps reflecting the change from Simmons to Tullgren as designer—no more cloisonné pins, it was now bangles, earrings, and necklaces of silver-or-gold-capped Plexiglas strips or tubes. Simpatico looks to have shut down soon after, with Terry taking design jobs at other lower-end jewelry manufacturers. Terry Tullgren grew up in Pompano Beach, Florida; I was unable to discover if he went to college for art or design. The only later mention I found of him anywhere was in September 1975 as the designer for the 1928 Jewelry Company, founded by Richard Wallen in 1968 as a line of nostalgic, faux-antique pieces. Whatever happened between the two of them, Tullgren’s part in first Simmon’s foray into jewelry was cleanly edited out of the official record.
In 1977, now the successful owner of a gym and salad bar, Richard Simmons again briefly went into jewelry design. Alongside Fran Schaen, the owner of the jewelry boutique at Jag (an Australian boutique chain that opened its first US store in Beverly Hills in June 1975), Simmons developed a line of “ouchless” jewelry: “The idea is to patch up a relationship with the gift of jewelry made in the form of Band-Aids and Curex patches.” 14-carat gold band-aids curved into cuffs with 10 diamonds studding in lieu of the perforations that normally appear on the gauze section; the circular band-aid ring featured six diamonds, as did the round Curex patch stick pin. A step up from Simpatico, the cuff was priced at $375, the ring at $125, and the pin at $115.
While this was the last jewelry line that Richard Simmons designed, he did re-enter fashion a decade later with an activewear line—more on that next week.
Hello, I made an account just to say thank you so much for putting together a more accurate Richard Simmons timeline. I’ve been trying to do a lot of research myself. I feel like he would’ve arrived in Florence in winter of 1969 (not January 68) based on what I’ve read, and seen. He transferred to Tallahassee in the fall of 1968 and from there went to Italy. Also, Someone who apparently knew the Simmons’ sent me a picture years ago from a family wedding in June of 68 and Richard was there. So he certainly arrived in Florence in early 1969, or Nov/Dec 68. And I definitely agree with you about the “multiple years for one event” thing. Drives me crazy. Like, in the book he says The Richard Simmons Show started in 1979, and then he says it was 1981. While there’s clearly advertisements showing a fall 1980 premiere. And then he says he “quietly” left General Hospital in 1980 to go straight to KTLA studios. Not true. It was 1982.
I just had to say my research “notes” as well. Thank you again for posting these articles and even the Cosmopolitan magazine pictures! That’s an EXTREMELY rare photo of Richard at that time (spring of 78). I also have a photo from August 1977 (clipped from a newspaper) and a black and white one that was seen on the 2022 Fox documentary, most likely from around when Anatomy Asylum opened in 1975 and he’s leading a workout. Hard to tell exactly when but it had to be around 1975-76 as his hair is shorter. I wish I could include it in my comment. There’s also college yearbook photos of Richard from 1968, with the straight hair. Who knows if anything exists from 1969-75. Somewhere, there has to be photos of 200+ lb Richard in Florence, in front of all the famous landmarks, but they’re probably all private and only viewed by family. Who would go to Italy and not pose for one photo?
Thanks again. Steve