He was born Nutya Kotlyrenko in Kiev in 1902 and became a tailor’s apprentice at eight. At eleven, his parents smuggled him and his brother out of the country to escape Russian pogroms. Family lore says an Ellis Island agent misunderstood him, christening him Nudie.
He dabbled in boxing, film editing, and tailoring, and spent nine months in Leavenworth for running drugs. In his 30s, he married Bobbie Kruger and they opened Nudie’s for the Ladies, a Times Square shop specializing in custom g-strings for strippers and showgirls. Times were tough—it was the Depression—so they moved to Hollywood.1
Nudie and Tex Williams gave each other their first big break: Williams couldn’t afford band uniforms, so he sold a horse for $150 and bought Nudie a sewing machine. Nudie then asked the singer Lefty Frizzell if he had the guts to wear rhinestones. He did—the gaudier, the better. Nudie made Elvis’ gold lame suit for the album 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong; and a sin-and-redemption suit for Gram Parsons, with embroidered pills, marijuana, and poppies on the front and a cross on the back.
Perry Farrell called Nudie suits “armor to do entertainment battle in” and the Las Vegas singer Judy Lynn (Miss Idaho 1955) said, “After he died [in 1984], we went through an era where everyone would get onstage in street clothes. I always felt that if people were willing to give you two or three hours of their time, you owe them some effort.”
Links:
Slideshow: Nudie’s suits in the Country Music Hall of Fame collection
Nudie Cohn: The Original Rhinestone Cowboy – Country Music Hall of Fame
How a Rhinestone Cowboy From Ukraine Left His Mark on the Music World – Amy Bizzarri, Smithsonian Magazine, May 17, 2023
Too many emails? Instructions for receiving a weekly summary can be found here.
This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 words on 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary. Through December 31, 2026.
I’m looking for ideas for this series — have something you’d like me to consider for inclusion? Please feel free to leave a comment! Hi
“When we first went to New York, we lived in a gambler's hotel. I was the only woman in the place. Nudie made G-strings and lingerie for the showgirls. New York wasn't very good to us; we had some very bad years. Nudie went from job to job. He really had western in his heart. In '39, we came to L.A. with our daughter, Barbara. We had a house on Woodson Avenue in North Hollywood, and we started on a Ping-Pong table. We made all-wool gabardine shirts with some embroidery, nothing fancy, and some pants, and sold them for $19 apiece.”
– Bobbie Cohn quoted in The New York Times Magazine, 2000
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.