Avery Trufelman

Oh, that is so cute.

Oh my God, I love that look.

And that was Claire?

Claire McArdle was even on the cover of Time magazine in 1955.

She was a constant source of public fascination.

Claire McArdle is the European's version of the typical American girl whom you never saw but read about in print.

Now we know who that girl was, the one who shared top billing with your beautiful tall buildings.

It was Claire McArdle, actually.

Claire McArdle was sort of the ideal American.

She was tall and broad-shouldered and spunky, and she had this sort of can-do attitude.

And she never really fit in with her time.

Like, she always wore her hair long, regardless of what everyone else was doing.

Like, even in the 1930s and 40s, when everybody else had their hair short, she was always doing her own thing.

So her clothes also were always hearty and spunky and timeless and always very, very practical, even when they were elegant.

Or here's another classic Claire.

A spunky, clever, all-American style by a spunky, clever, all-American girl.

And Claire was always called a girl.

So that girl thing is, of course, super condescending.

And it's really different from the refined lady designers of Europe, like Coco Chanel or Elsa Schiaparelli.

But Claire McArdle also had a really different approach than they did.