The Great American Fashion Designer

 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 towards.

Claire McCardell.

She was making throughly modern clothes in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

If you ask Anna Sui, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors or Tory Burch who they admire, they will all say Claire McCardell. She 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.

When Claire lived in New York City,  women still had to have a male signature to get a checking account. Women couldn’t got to restaurants without a male escort.

 So how did Claire McCardell 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?

Some answers are in the latest episode.

Of course, I want you to listen to the episode, but more answers are in Elisabeth Evitts Dickinsons’ excellent book Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free.

 McCardell always put her closures on the side or in the front, so women could dress themselves— back in Claire’s time, a lot of dresses required someone else to zip you up or button you in. Claire was a real advocate for independent living, and she herself lived alone until she was 37, which is like shockingly late in her time.

During World War II out of necessity Claire created one of her most famous designs: a wrap dress.

 It’s called the “popover,” because you could pop it over your clothes. It was a little wraparound dress, cute, charming, which could easily slip on for getting a little messier. And this was one of the great wartime inventions and that became wildly famous.

And the legacy of the pop-over continues to this day. As historian and sewing expert Julie Eilber quipped “I guess Prada got the memo because this half-assed Becky-Home-Ecky version is on their website. It doesn’t even have a pocket! Claire’s version was so much cooler.”

And by the way, Julie Eilber helped make a modern version of Claire’s famous “monastic dress” available to anyone with a needle and thread.

It looks just as elegant, just as comfortable, just as timeless, as it did when Claire made it 88 years ago.