Peggy Moffitt, fashion model and muse who scandalised the 1960s with the topless ‘monokini’ – obituary

At times her relationship with Gernreich bordered on the symbiotic. He would devise a Pierrot-style collection and she would paint her face like a clown to match. As he was working on an Asian collection, she was in another part of the world, unaware of his plans, experimenting with Kabuki-like mask makeup. When he made a black skullcap with feathers, she bleached her eyebrows to give her face a deathly appearance. “Rudi and I turned each other on… we fed each other,” she recalled.

She continued to champion his clothes into later life, wearing them to most public appearances. They included oversized florals, windowpane checks and mini dresses inset with vinyl stripes. Teamed with her lunar pallor, heavy-fringed eye make-up and her signature Vidal Sassoon asymmetric haircut – “Sassoon is to hair, what Picasso is to painting,” she once said – they made her one of the most recognisable figures in fashion.

She became disillusioned with the industry as a whole, however, declaring it “dead” save for “dream occasions” on the red carpet. Away from the party scene she was likely to be found in her garden, clad in jeans and a sweatshirt.