Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free

Reading this book left me with so many “did you know?...” moments. Claire McCardell was a fashion designer who put the needs of her customers ahead of the fashion du jour. American women needed to be able to move throughout the day and to go from one type of occasion to another with ease. We needed pockets! We needed ballet flats! We needed separates! And so much more that McCardell first wove into her design aesthetic. Did you know she was the first designer to popularize the wrap dress? The story of her professional life is a contrary look at fashion history. If you follow European couture, you may have missed this talented American designer. She spent years working in the traditional space of French couture look-alikes, but she show more kept her own counsel, and produced womenswear that was practical as well as charming, eventually becoming the trendsetter for American fashion. Elizabeth Evitts Dickenson does a remarkable job of telling McCardell’s story while setting it in its place in history, primarily 1930s to 1950s. Although a private person to the extreme, Dickenson was able to suss out some of the artist’s personal life from correspondence and conversation shared by her family. I thoroughly enjoyed this biography and highly recommend it if your interests include feminist history and the long tail of fashion design. show less

Not my typical read, but very interesting! Would have been five stars but there were points where it seemed to veer off topic. Some of the times made sense (deep dive into Dior’s women punishing fashion ideas as compared to McCardell’s). But the out of nowhere section on marginalized people in the fashion industry at that time was clunky and seemed more of a virtue signal. It’s important, but made no sense in a biography of McCardell especially since there was no mention of her views on the subject. It was just this weird non sequitur. Other than that, I highly recommend.

Very interesting book to read back to back biographies about women. I think the things about fashion before the 1960’s was extremely interesting. On the one hand Claire was a pioneer but still bought into the conversation about how women should look - body size, veins thin etc was part of her mantra. I suppose she was the forerunner of Lulemone.