On the occasion of the 1998 Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology exhibition of Claire McCardell’s clothing, Constance C.R. Life magazine, in 1990, named her one of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century. “By any yardstick,” declared Newsweek on June 5 of that year, “it was the smash fashion collection of the season.” McCardell evening sweater and rayon satin skirt, Rawlings/ Vogue 1945Ī 1972 showing of McCardell designs presented at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, reintroduced the designer to the public. She designed ski and golf togs, as well as office and wedding dresses-creating for the gamut of the modern American woman’s life. She is now considered the mother of American sportswear, combining style and functional wearability. No longer was American fashion tied so heavily to more expensive and restrictive French fashion.* The entire idea of American design suddenly took on a new significance which McCardell most eloquently expressed. World War II actually unwrapped the package which was McCardell’s gift to women. She graduated from Parsons in 1928, and held a series of positions with Townley Frocks, Hattie Carnegie and Win-Sum, before she returned to the reopened Townley in 1940. Even more presciently, she felt unable to do what her brother did in the outfits she was expected to wear. What woman wouldn’t?īorn on Claire McCardell first became interested in style at an early age, cutting out images from her mother’s fashion magazines as paper dolls. When I started discovering vintage fashion designers, I fell head-over-heels for Claire McCardell.
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