Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free

Journalist Dickinson debuts with an admiring biography of American fashion designer Claire McCardell (1905–1958). After graduating from Parsons design school in New York City, McCardell apprenticed at male-owned Seventh Avenue design studios before eventually becoming the head designer at Townley Frocks, a mid-level sportswear manufacturer. An advocate for function over fashion—what “Paris unleashed every few months to keep a woman agitated and hungry and buying new clothes,” Dickinson writes—she drew inspiration from everyday life to pioneer ballet flats; ready-to-wear separates; and the wrap dress. She also nearly single-handedly brought sportswear—previously restricted to “private, female-only spaces”—into public spaces. During WWII, when the New York fashion scene was cut off from French influences, McCardell seized the opportunity to design slacks for the influx of women entering factory jobs, and to provide demonstrations for women on how to repurpose fabrics that were in short supply. Throughout, Dickinson illustrates how fashion served as a mirror for sociopolitical change, with the suffragist ideals of the 19th century that influenced McCardell (the notion that “a women’s freedom began with her clothes... Unencumbered bodies meant unencumbered lives”) giving way to postwar conservatism as women returned to the home and Christian Dior put forth a hyperfeminized look that emphasized cinched waists and structured shoulders. Fashion aficionados won’t want to miss this. (June)