The Great American Designer
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Who are the titans of American fashion design?
France has its elegant couture from its established ateliers, and Italy has its craftsmanship in its storied houses. But America has brands. Brands that make mass-produced, casual, sporty, comfortable clothing for everyone. And we're a young country, but when you think about it, our fashion design history is even younger. Like, who are the titans of American fashion design? It's Donna Karan, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren. These designers who are all still alive. But if you want to look at where these great fashion designers got it all from, there was a great American fashion designer who many of them were looking to.
Calvin Klein, I quote in the book, like he said, she's the one who did it. She's the one who set the stage and set the standard.
This is journalist Elizabeth Evitz-Dickinson. We were speaking live on stage at the New York Historical for this interview, hence the little stagey echo. And we were talking about this designer who made so many of the classics of the American wardrobe.
This was a woman who was responsible for much of what was in my closet. Ballet flats, mix and match separates, wrap dresses, denim and women's wear, hoodies. And I was shocked that I had never heard her name.
Her name was Claire McArdle, and Elizabeth wrote a brilliant book about her called Claire McArdle, The Designer Who Set Women Free.
And if you talk to designers today, many of them will say that Claire McArdle is part of their design inspiration, whether that's Anna Sui, who I've talked to about her, or Michael Kors or Tory Burch.
Claire McArdle was doing what many of those designers were doing decades earlier. All of her clothes you could wear today. Claire made halter tops and wrap dresses and leotards and pants with big practical pockets. Generally very cute, totally modern clothes that women would love to wear now. But they were designed at a very different time. Like, this is a designer who was born in 1905.
You had boning in your bodice and you had crinolines.
Claire grew up in an era when clothes were worn completely differently.
You had one dress for when you were asleep and you had another dress for when you were doing your house chores. And then you had a day dress and that involved a corset.
And sure, by the time Claire was studying at Parsons, it was the 1920s. Women were starting to get rid of corsets and stuff like that. But for a while, she was still wearing poofy crinoline underskirts.
Like her quote was, I don't hate crinolines. I just hate when they try and get into an elevator. Because like what women were being asked to wear, you couldn't get into a cab. You couldn't ride the subway.
What impact did Claire McArdle have on American fashion?
You couldn't get into an elevator.
And it's not like Claire could just wear pants. She legally couldn't.
There were municipal laws. There were vice codes about what you were allowed to wear and not to wear. And a lot of this was about gendering fashion, right? If you were not wearing what was considered appropriate to your gender, you could go to jail.
I mean, there were other ones. I kept going through the book. New laws kept popping up all the time. It's like, well, women were required to wear a hat. It's like, seriously? When they went swimming, they had to wear swim stockings. Like, are you kidding me? Like, there's so many things that they had to wear and keep track of at risk of being fined or put in jail. And this lasted kind of a long time. It wasn't just like, oh, when she was a little kid, it was like in her lifetime. I mean, one of my favorite slash least favorite stories was about the kindergarten teacher in Los Angeles.
Can you tell me that one? This was in the 30s, around the time that Claire was just starting to really break out with this unstructured, comfortable sportswear. There was this woman across the coast who got robbed. She was held up, and she was at court to testify against the men who robbed her. But the judge was more concerned by the fact that she was wearing pants. And he said she needed to go home and change into a dress. And she refused.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Who are the titans of American fashion design?
0:00–2:47
2
What impact did Claire McArdle have on American fashion?
2:47–7:17
3
How did Claire McArdle revolutionize women's clothing in the 1930s?
7:17–9:45
4
What challenges did women face in fashion during Claire's time?
9:45–11:10
5
How did World War II influence Claire McArdle's designs?
11:10–43:33