Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
She wanted to harness mass production.
She said, We are a mass production country.
We want to give the best to all people.
All of us deserve the right to good fashion.
Anybody could wear it and it could be mass produced.
So she was thinking about how to make something that was both beautiful, but that could also be washable.
It could be wrinkle-free.
Like, there was Lady Levi's in the 30s, but there was no denim in women's wear.
It was a gendered fabric.
The rationing was really strict.
Very few fabrics were allowed to be used.
Most were held for military use.
And this is where McArdle just thrived because she was really creative.
Claire had been called into Deanna Vreeland's office.
Deanna was very melodramatic.
She's like, women are suffering, Claire.
And this was one of the great wartime inventions that Claire made and that became wildly famous and sort of pioneered the wrap dress.