My Goodreads and Amazon review of Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson (Rated 5) – Portrait of the Artist as a Young Modern. Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson is three volumes in one: the biography of the American fashion designer who created women’s sportswear; a survey of fashion personalities and practices from its preeminence in pre-WW2 Paris to its rising prominence in postwar New York; and a history of the emergence of second-wave feminism. This weighty and well-researched book nevertheless reads as breezily and comfortably as a McCardell wrap-around dress and pair of ballet flats. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I applaud Dickinson’s skill in seamlessly joining a multitude of facts with a flowing narrative. McCardell emerges as a modern designer with respect for the past, a woman at ease with her body who understands female anatomy. Above all, McCardell comes across as trusting her own instincts and respecting the desires of those she’s designing for. She believed that clothes should be a natural extension of the self and not, as male designers decreed, a means to reshape and even contort the body. I first learned about McCardell while researching my novel A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve., a fictional biography of the actor who plays the Munchkin coroner in The Wizard of Oz and later (as I imagined), tired of having to shop in the children’s department, opens a clothing line labeled “Big People Clothes for Little People.” He too designs for his clients. McCardell was lauded in her era, but I was dismayed that, despite being a staunch second-wave feminist since its earliest days, I had never heard of her before. Hopefully, Dickinson’s engaging and informative book will patch that hole in the fabric of fashion history and introduce McCardell to a new generation.
A designer who understood what modern American women wanted to wear
Why writers read: “To read is to voyage through time.” – Carl Sagan
