Riveting Hidden History of 20th Century’s Most Influential Fashion Designer

Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson

Fashion designer Claire McCardell is receiving some overdue attention and appreciation with the recently published Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free, written by award-winning journalist and author Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson.

The New York Historical Museum, located at 170 Central Park West (77th Street) in Manhattan, has an important new exhibition, Rationing Fashion: Claire McCardell’s Wartime Innovation, on display from May 8 to September 14, 2025. Their website invites visitors to “See how Claire McCardell’s innovative approach to fashion both transformed and empowered American women’s lives during World War II, and set the stage for fashion in the 21st century.”

This celebrates the acclaimed American clothing designer of ready-to-wear apparel who created affordable fashions while utilizing strict rationing guidelines that regulated access to dress materials.

20th Century American Fashion

Harper’s Bazaar editors Diana Vreeland and Carmel Snow, on behalf of the American government, tasked their friend Claire to meet a design challenge in 1942 to create a garment American women could purchase that used less fabric, was durable and affordable with wartime rationing in place.

She quickly created what she called a “pop-over” dress, a simple cotton wrap embellished with top stitching that included a large patch pocket, eliminating the need for a purse and completed with an oven mitt attached at the waist as a novelty feature. Cotton was grown in the USA, and the clothing was produced in New York City’s garment district.

It was practical, could be made in a wide range of available fabrics, retailed for less than seven dollars and was hugely successful with over 75,000 dresses sold in the first year. The pattern was made available for home seamstresses, and the enduring design of the wrap dress remained a signature item for McCardell postwar. The American Fashion Critics Association awarded her a citation for this design, and she was the 1943 recipient of a Coty Award.

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson has written much more than an extensively researched and well-annotated biography, providing a concise history of an era when American women dominated the ready-to-wear fashion industry.

The following wave of designers was led by a generation of men, including Halston, Bill Blass, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger, who credited Claire McCardell as being their inspiration. Calvin Klein stated: “She really invented sportswear, which is this country’s major contribution to fashion. She realized that and did it in the 1940s.”

A Designer’s Rise to Fame

Claire McCardell was born in Frederick, Maryland, on May 24, 1905, the eldest of four children. Their affluent parents were Eleanor McCardell and A. LeRoy McCardell, a bank president and Maryland state senator.

Sewing and fashion design were early passions for Claire, who, upon high school graduation at age 16, wished to immediately study in New York. Because of her youth, her parents convinced her to enroll in the home economics department at Hood College in their hometown of Frederick.

After two years, she was permitted to move to New York to study fashion design at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, which was renamed the Parsons School of Design in 1941. She continued her studies with Parsons at their branch in Paris, graduating with certification in costume design in 1923.

Her initial duties in the industry were jobs sketching clothing, painting, and working as a fit model before fortuitously meeting established designer Robert Turk in 1930, who hired her to be his assistant designer. After his death by drowning less than 2 years later, their employer, Townley Frocks, requested that she complete the line he was working on. Her career was launched. 

In 1940, after a stint of working with the famed Hattie Carnegie, she returned to Townley, now under new management, with a landmark change in the company label, which now read “Claire McCardell Clothes by Townley”.

She was among the first American fashion designers to receive name recognition.

Claire McCardell was never a Hollywood costume designer but did have many customers from the stage and movie industry, including Joan Crawford, Katherine Hepburn and Gertrude Lawrence. The top department stores of the era, many of which are now defunct, carried her designs.

McCardell was named the Lord and Taylor “American Look” designer in 1945, and her full design line of clothing and accessories was carried and shown at regular lunchtime fashion shows held at their in-house Birdcage Restaurants. Saks, B. Altman and other stores across the USA had many regular customers eager to purchase her impeccably tailored clothing.

Claire McCardell’s remarkable career endured until her early death from aggressive colon cancer at the age of 52 on March 22, 1958.

Immeasurable Contributions to Fashion

Claire was an award-winning modernist fashion designer widely credited with creating “The American Look” in sportswear; women’s clothing that is beautiful, comfortable, versatile, functional and timelessly stylish.

Her garments, packed flat, were simple to launder and often made with easy-care materials like jersey. She was a pioneer in using lightweight menswear woolens as well as rayon, denim, calico and cotton that had previously been relegated to cheap housedresses and uniforms.

Using a technique she had learned during her student year in Paris and inspired by the innovative French designer Madeleine Vionnet, she integrated cutting fabric on the bias to give it swing and movement. Claire had purchased one of the Vionnet dresses and disassembled it in her hotel room using a seam ripper to study the manufacturing technique before sewing it back together.

In the 1920s and 30s. continuing to the present day, many American designers went or sent spies to French and Italian haute couture fashion houses to copy designs. This was a practice Claire McCardell eschewed.

It seems absurd now, but previously, women’s clothing lacked pockets; they became a standard in Claire McCardell designs. Her clothes eliminated difficult-to-reach back zippers or buttons, replacing them with side or front closures.

Readers, ask yourself if you have ever purchased separates, pairing different-sized tops and jackets with skirts or slacks that fit without the need for expensive alterations in same-size suits? Have you worn ballet flats, those often colorful dance shoes first made by Capezio, manufacturers of all types of dance gear since 1877?

This now ubiquitous style came about during wartime when McCardell realized shoes were rationed but dance wear was not, and commissioned the manufacturer to apply heavier soles suitable for walking on city cement sidewalks. This resulted in the production of a wide range of ballet flats to coordinate with her designs.

Keeping McCardell’s Legacy Alive

Back in 1941, one concept was the revolutionary creation of a lightweight, easy-care, travel wardrobe consisting of five matching, separate, interchangeable pieces that could be accessorized for almost any occasion. She did the same with day into night dressing that could take a career woman from office to dinner and an evening out with the minor addition of a dressy jacket.

Her clothing and sewing patterns are represented worldwide in permanent design collections and are highly sought after by vintage clothing buyers. Her personal papers and design archive are housed in Baltimore, accessible to researchers and historians.

Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson explores the importance of clothing design in women’s history while providing a window into the rich, full personal and business life of this bright and fun-loving designer who freed women from the constraints of boned corsets and restrictive clothing.

Respected, well-liked and honored during her lifetime, Claire McCardell has not been forgotten in fashion histories but is unknown to the average shopper who clearly owes her a debt of gratitude for today’s stylish sportswear.

This fascinating, informative biography celebrates her life and enduring contribution to the ever-evolving fashion industry. This reviewer was so enthralled she sought out and purchased a vintage Claire McCardell two-piece dress — with pockets — that fits, flatters and remains remarkably vibrant for a garment that is about 70 years old.