the designer who set women free --1/16/26

16 Jan 2026

the designer who set women free --1/16/26

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Today's selection-- from Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson. Claire McCardell (1905 -1958) was the American fashion icon who gained fame by designing “her garments to fit a woman's natural body,” and was credited with creation of truly America sportswear intended for comfort:

“It was after six o'clock on a June evening in 1955, and Claire McCardell sat in her Manhattan apartment with an eager young journalist. McCardell, age fifty, had recently made the cover of Time magazine, only the second fashion designer to achieve the honor. Life was readying a story about outfits she'd made using fabric designs by the artists Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall. McCardell had granted hundreds of interviews during her twenty-seven-year career. But in all that time, she'd never allowed a journalist inside her apartment. Somehow, she'd been disarmed by the energetic reporter, whose dogged curiosity she'd come to admire over the several days the woman had shadowed her at work.

“The journalist was equally surprised to have gained access to McCardell's Upper East Side home. She'd been warned that McCardell protected her personal life. The writer, though, was Betty Friedan, and she was on a mission. The thirty-four-year-old mother would later write that ‘something is very wrong with the way American women are trying to live their lives today.’ She was already forming the ideas that would become her 1963 feminist cri de coeur, The Feminine Mystique. On that evening, she wanted to take a peek inside the life of one of the most influential women in America.

“Friedan had told her editor at The Town journal that a profile on Claire McCardell would provide the story of American fashion coming into its own. McCardell had ushered in a new era of modern design and pioneered what was widely known as the American Look: casual, stylish, ready-to-wear sportswear that was also affordable. In doing so, she had become one of the first designers to successfully join high fashion with mass production.

McCardell in Time magazine in 1955

“Equally important to Friedan was the story of a woman advancing her ambitions in a culture that prioritized men. McCardell was born and raised in the small town of Frederick, Maryland, far from the centers of fashion. When she had arrived in New York in 1925, clothing labels had carried the name of the manufacturer or the department store, not the designer. McCardell had wanted to create her own brand, and she'd wanted her name to be stitched on the label. What she'd envisioned didn't yet exist, so she'd set out to build it. Her aspirations outpaced what was allowed in the dressmaking industry, let alone by a woman.

“Friedan now sat in one of McCardell's armchairs, pen poised over her open notebook. McCardell didn't look anything like a famous fashion designer. She wore an understated ankle-length dress made of navy wool jersey. Her long, wavy hair was caught up in a casual knot, her natural blond shot through with streaks of silver. Tendrils framed an angular face free of makeup.

“McCardell opened a wardrobe filled with clothes she'd made over the years. She walked Friedan through some of her innovations. She'd developed leotards and leggings, brought hoodies, denim, and leather into women's wear, ushered the swimsuit into its contemporary form, included pockets in her clothes, and made the wrap dress a wardrobe staple. In the early twentieth century, women had been restricted to wearing sports clothes in private, female-only spaces. McCardell had brought those clothes out into the open and transformed them into everyday street wear.

“‘I've always designed things I needed myself,’ McCardell liked to say. She thought of herself as a ‘continuous experiment, a testing ground for ideas.’ Clothes, for her, were more than a way to cover and protect the human body or to peacock one's personal style; they were a physical manifestation of a woman's ideas, identity, and desires. McCardell eschewed the male-dominated vision of fashion, preferring to create clothes that fit women's bodies as well as their growing ambitions. Conventional dressmaking often dictated that women force themselves into structured clothes to achieve the idolized hourglass shape, but McCardell cut her garments to fit a woman's natural body. She'd forsaken high heels and introduced ballet flats. She'd shocked retailers when she invented the capsule wardrobe 'Composed of mix-and-match separates in the early 1930s. The women who wore McCardell—from housewives to Hollywood stars, from artists and activists to hardworking professionals tended to be confident, accomplished, and, most of all, comfortable.

“Now the freedoms McCardell had advocated and advanced for herself and for other women were under attack. That was what Friedan really wanted to discuss. Women, like McCardell, had increasingly pursued higher education and built careers in the years between the world wars. They'd entered the workforce in droves during World War II, but as soldiers came home, many women were pushed to stop working and return to domesticity.

“The fashion world reflected the postwar change. The French designer Christian Dior had introduced a hyperfeminized style replete with padded shoulders, tightly cinched waists, and high heels. He wanted to ‘save women from nature,’ and he squeezed his models into clothing with an eighteen-inch waist. The press had dubbed it the "New Look." In fact, it was a regression to the old ways of manipulating a woman's body by putting her in restrictive clothing.”