Avery Trufelman

So women usually had to live in boarding houses with very strict rules and early curfews like you were a kid.

So Claire McArdle was amazing.

She was a woman at a time when it was exceedingly difficult just to be a woman.

But also, she had her name on a line of clothing when American fashion design hardly existed.

The fashion designers were in France.

New York was where the factories were.

In New York, they were supposed to be making knockoffs of the French silk gowns.

They weren't supposed to be making the sort of cute, practical clothes that Claire wanted to make.

So how did Claire McArdle beat the odds?

In a time when women couldn't do anything and American fashion designers didn't exist, how did she become the great American fashion designer and create so much of what's in our closets and go on to inspire generations of American designers after her?

And yet, still, somehow, for a time, get so thoroughly forgotten.

After the break.

The American look was this wholesome, sporty, mass-produced style for the wholesome, sporty, modern woman.

And it was pioneered by a whole cohort of designers like Elizabeth Hawes and Bonnie Cashin and Zelda Wynne Valdez.

Many of these designers were women.

Many of them were Black women.

But none were as famous as Claire McArdle.

In her lifetime, Claire McArdle was really, really famous.

I got a tour through the library of the Fashion Institute of Technology from April Callahan, who you might recognize as the co-host of Dressed, the fantastic podcast about fashion.

In her old day job, April was the special collections associate at FIT, which has this great collection of Claire McArdle clippings.