The Great American Designer

Summary

Podcast Summary: Articles of Interest – "The Great American Designer"

Host: Avery Trufelman
Guests: Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson, April Callahan, Julie Elber, Fashion Historians/Commentators
Date: February 27, 2026

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Overview

This episode explores the pioneering yet underappreciated legacy of Claire McCardell, the designer who quietly shaped the “Great American look.” Host Avery Trufelman, joined by journalist Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson and other experts, traces McCardell’s trajectory from early-20th-century Maryland to her ascendance as a revolutionary force on New York’s 7th Avenue. The conversation highlights how McCardell’s timeless, practical, and democratic clothes transformed both fashion and women’s lives—yet she remains overshadowed by male “high fashion” legends like Christian Dior. The episode interrogates why, despite her foundational contributions, McCardell's name faded from fashion history and what her vision still means today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. American Fashion’s Unique Heritage

• America vs. France/Italy: America’s legacy is less about couture and more about mass-produced, casual, accessible clothing (00:00).
• Claire McCardell’s Place: While brands like Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, and Ralph Lauren are considered titans, it was Claire McCardell who laid their groundwork—often uncredited.

  “She’s the one who did it. She’s the one who set the stage and set the standard.”
  — Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson quoting Calvin Klein (00:46)

2. Claire McCardell: The Feminist Undercurrent

• Origins & Struggles: Born in 1905, McCardell grew up when restrictive laws and social codes prevented women from practical dress or even living independently (02:08–04:44).

  “If you were not wearing what was considered appropriate to your gender, you could go to jail.”
  — Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson (02:53)

• Adverse Conditions: Early 20th-century fashion demanded corsets and crinolines; legal and social obstacles for women were severe.
• Innovation Born of Constraint: McCardell’s desire to create functional, modern, and comfortable clothing subverted expectations and regulations of her era.

3. Breaking the Copycat Mold in Fashion

• Industry Standard: New York’s fashion was based on copying Paris designs (14:09–14:35).
• McCardell’s Integrity: Disliking the culture of copying, Claire snuck her own original sketches into the design pile, leading to her promotion (15:04–15:29).

  “She just made up her own drawings and slid them into the stack.”
  — Avery Trufelman (15:06) “He took her seriously and he trained her and he showed her the ropes.”
  — Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson on Robert Turk (15:29)

4. The Monastic Dress: A Fashion Revolution

• Breakout Design: The “monastic dress” (1938) had no front or back, required no understructure, and could be belted to fit any body (18:05–19:37).

  “My God, it has no front, it has no back.”
  — Manufacturer’s reaction (18:05)

• Immediate Imitation: It was a smash hit but immediately knocked off by competitors—showcasing both McCardell’s creative genius and the pitfalls of American mass production (21:12–21:43).

5. Mass Production & Accessibility

• Democratizing Fashion: McCardell insisted on using humble, accessible fabrics like cotton and denim (27:28–28:14).

  “We are a mass production country. We want to give the best to all people.”
  — Claire McCardell, read by Avery Trufelman (27:28)

• Wartime Innovation: Wartime rationing forced further ingenuity, such as inventing the ballet flat with Capezio and the “popover” wrap dress for housework (29:00–31:14).

6. Function over Frill: Eternal Design

• Practicality at the Core: McCardell’s dresses featured side or front closures for women's independence, big pockets, and designs that enabled active lives (32:40–33:05).

  “She always put her closures on the side or in the front so women could dress themselves, which is like, duh. But back in Claire's time, a lot of dresses required someone else to zip you up or button you in.”
  — Fashion Historian (32:45)

• Personal Life: McCardell lived independently until 37, married late, and was the breadwinner in her family—mirroring her designs’ ethos of autonomy and modernity.

7. The Postwar Pushback: Dior vs. McCardell

• Dior’s “New Look”: After WWII, Christian Dior’s highly structured, “wasp-waisted” designs dominated, celebrating regressive femininity (34:31–40:19).

  “Dior was about making a woman fit her designs. Claire McCardell was about fitting a woman's body.”
  — Avery Trufelman (34:50)

• Media Clash: McCardell openly challenged Dior’s return to restrictive silhouettes and became known as the “gal who defied Dior” (41:04).

  “Claire got into a media spat with the French. She was angry. She said, why are we going backwards?”
  — Fashion Historian (34:56)

8. Fading Legacy and Industry Realities

• Why McCardell Was Forgotten: She didn’t own her label; her name died with her employer, and there was no precedent for maintaining ready-to-wear designer names (42:05–43:00).

  “Claire McCardell, when she died, Townley tried to keep her label alive probably for about a year, year and a half... but they just didn’t know how to replace her.”
  — Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson (43:00)

• Contrast with Dior: Dior’s name survived via corporate licensing and, later, luxury conglomerates (LVMH), ensuring global brand immortality (43:40–45:31).

  “So that’s another reason why we all know Dior’s name. Nothing like that has happened with Claire McCardell.” — Avery Trufelman (45:31)

• Lost Women: Many American women designers of McCardell’s era—Elizabeth Hawes, Zelda Wynn Valdez, Ann Lowe—have also been left out of fashion's official history (43:16–43:25).

  “Unfortunately, they weren’t prioritized in the storytelling.”
  — Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson (43:22)

9. Contemporary Impact and Revival

• More Than a Brand: The panel agrees McCardell’s true influence is her role in enabling women’s autonomy through their clothes (45:31).

  “This was a movement that was always about more than clothes. It was really about autonomy and freedom and a capacity to choose how you wanted to live your life.”
  — Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson (45:31)

• Modern DIY Movement: Thanks to enthusiasts like Julie Elber and the Cashmerette pattern company, home sewers around the world can now recreate McCardell’s monastic dress, continuing her accessible spirit (45:52–46:31).

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Notable Quotes

• “She’s the one who did it. She’s the one who set the stage and set the standard.” — Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson, quoting Calvin Klein (00:46)
• “If you were not wearing what was considered appropriate to your gender, you could go to jail.” — Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson (02:53)
• “She just made up her own drawings and slid them into the stack.” — Avery Trufelman on McCardell’s original designs (15:06)
• “My God, it has no front, it has no back.” — Manufacturer on monastic dress (18:05)
• “We are a mass production country. We want to give the best to all people.” — Claire McCardell (27:28)
• “She always put her closures on the side or in the front so women could dress themselves, which is like, duh. But back in Claire's time, a lot of dresses required someone else to zip you up or button you in.” — Fashion Historian (32:45)
• “Claire got into a media spat with the French. She was angry. She said, why are we going backwards?” — Fashion Historian (34:56)
• “This was a movement that was always about more than clothes. It was really about autonomy and freedom and a capacity to choose how you wanted to live your life.” — Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson (45:31)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–01:27 – Introduction: American fashion history; laying the groundwork for Claire McCardell's importance
• 02:08–04:44 – Gender, law, and restrictive clothing for women
• 14:09–15:29 – Culture of copying and McCardell’s principled rebellion
• 18:05–21:43 – The revolutionary monastic dress and its immediate imitation
• 27:28–28:14 – Embracing mass production and the idea of fashion for all
• 29:00–31:14 – World War II: inventing the ballet flat, the “popover,” and design ingenuity during rationing
• 32:40–33:05 – Accessibility: dressing independently and thoughtful design details
• 34:31–40:19 – The Dior-McCardell divide: post-war fashion regresses
• 41:04 – Media recognition: “the gal who defied Dior”
• 42:05–43:00 – Why McCardell’s legacy faded
• 45:31–46:31 – Claire’s long-term influence, new sewing patterns, present-day revival

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Conclusion

Avery Trufelman and her guests show that Claire McCardell was more than a forgotten label. She was a founding mother of modern American fashion—championing affordable, accessible, and truly liberating styles for every woman. Her legacy persists not in luxury boutiques, but in the personal freedom her designs continue to provide:

“It was really about autonomy and freedom and a capacity to choose how you wanted to live your life.” — Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson (45:31)

The episode closes with a look at modern efforts to resurrect McCardell’s most iconic patterns for today’s makers, proving her influence—and her ideals—are still shaping wardrobes, and lives.

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For further reading:

• Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson’s book: Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free
• Cashmerette Patterns: Sewing patterns for McCardell’s monastic dress
• Podcast “Dressed” by April Callahan
• Articles of Interest Substack for pattern links

Transcript

[Avery Trufelman]

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 to, Calvin Klein.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

I quote in the book, like he said, she's the one who did it. She's the one who set the stage and set the standard.

[Avery Trufelman]

This is journalist Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson. We were speaking live on stage at the New York Historical for this interview. Hence the little stick, JG Echo. And we were talking about this designer who made so many of the classics of the American wardrobe.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

This was a woman who was responsible for much of what was in my closet. Ballet flats, mix and match separates, wrap dresses, denim and women's wear hoodies. And I was shocked that I had never heard her name.

[Avery Trufelman]

Her name was Claire McCardell. And Elizabeth wrote a brilliant book about her called Claire McCardell, designer who set Women Free.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

And if you talk to designers today, many of them will say that Claire McCardell is part of their design inspiration,

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

whether that's Anna Sui, who I've talked

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

to about her, or Michael Kors or Tory Burch.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire McCardell 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.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

You had boning in your bodice, and you had crinolines.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire grew up in an era when clothes were worn completely differently.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

You had one dress for when you were asleep, and you had another dress for when you were doing your house spring chores. And then you had a day dress, and that involved a corset.

[Avery Trufelman]

And sure, by the time Claire was studying at Parsons, it was the 1920s, women were starting to get rid of corsets and stuff like that. But for a while, she was still wearing poofy crinoline underskirts.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Like, her quote was, I don't hate crinolines. I just hate when they try and get into an elevator because, like, what women were being asked to wear, you couldn't get into a cab. You couldn't ride the subway. You couldn't get into an elevator.

[Avery Trufelman]

And it's not like Claire could just wear pants. She legally couldn't.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

There were municipal laws. There were vice codes about what you were allowed to wear and not to wear. And a lot of this was about gendering fashion, right? If you were not wearing what was considered appropriate to your gender, you could go to jail.

[Avery Trufelman]

I mean, there were other ones. I kept going through the book. Like, new laws kept popping up all the time. It's like, well, women were required to wear a hat. It's like, seriously, when they went swimming, they had to wear swim stockings. Like, are you kidding me? Like, there's so many things that they had to wear and keep track of at risk of being fined or put in jail. And this lasted kind of a long time. It wasn't just like, oh, when she was a little kid, it was like, in her lifetime. I mean, one of my favorite, slash, least favorite stories was about the kindergarten teacher in Los Angeles. Can you tell me that one? They.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

This was in the 30s, around the time that Claire was just starting to really break out with this unstructured, comfortable sportswear. There's this woman across the coast who got robbed. She was held up, and she was at court to testify against the men who robbed her. But the judge was more concerned by the fact that she was wearing pants. And he said she needed to go home and change into a dress. And she refused, and he jailed her.

[Avery Trufelman]

I forget this. Being a woman was a very different experience in the early 20th century.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

There weren't even women's rooms in most public buildings at the time.

[Avery Trufelman]

When Claire McCardell left her home in Maryland to move to New York City, it wasn't like being Carrie Bradshaw.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

If you were a single woman trying to come to the city, there was no place for you to live.

[Avery Trufelman]

Women couldn't rent a hotel room because then it was thought you were a prostitute. So women usually had to live in boarding houses with very strict rules and early curfews like you were a kid.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

I mean, you know, you still had to have a mail signature to get a checking account. You still had to have a male escort to get into restaurants.

[Avery Trufelman]

So Claire McCardell was amazing. She was a woman at a time when it was exceedingly difficult just to be a woman. But also, she had her name on a line of clothing when American fashion design hardly existed.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

There was no such thing as a fashion designer.

[Avery Trufelman]

In New York, the fashion designers were in France. New York was where the factories were.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

The garment district was thriving, but it was primarily a manufacturing hub for churning out Parisian copies.

[Avery Trufelman]

In New York, they were supposed to be making knockoffs of the French silk gowns. They weren't supposed to be making the sort of cute, practical clothes that Claire wanted to make.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And yet a lot of what she

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

created in the 1930s and 40s really laid the foundation for modern, ready to wear American gowns clothing.

[Avery Trufelman]

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 after the break.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Before we start today's show, we want to shout out another member of The Radiotopia family. Radiodiaries. For almost 30 years, radio diaries has been helping people document their own lives and histories. Now they're back with a new series called Orson Welles and the Blind Soldier about a small town crime that sparked the desegregation of the U.S. military in 1946. A black World War II veteran named Isaac Woodard was blinded by a white police officer. Nobody knew who the officer was or where the attack happened. But when famed director Orson Welles found out about the attack, he pledged to not only broadcast it, but solve it on the radio week by week.

[Voice Actor / Performer]

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[Podcast Host / Narrator]

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[Avery Trufelman]

I've been having a lot of conversations about what's coming up in the spring. And guess what's in style? Preppy clothes. That's right. Fresh whites, clean stripes, tailored linens, nautical details. Preppy clothes. They are back. But you know what? I think they never went away. I love that this look comes back again and again and again, always in new, fresh ways. And I love that Macy's is leaning into that classic coastal vibe. I'm here for it. They have so many cute Pieces that put a modern twist on the preppy yacht look. Shop in store or online@macy's.com it's so important to take care of yourself, especially in these dark days. And if you are working through anxiety, depression, adhd, ocd, ptsd, bipolar disorder, I mean, sure, you can talk to a therapist, you can meditate. These are really important things you can do. But sometimes you just need a little more help. Tochiatry gives you access to real psychiatric care with licensed clinicians who can diagnose and prescribe medication if it's right for you. I truly believe in better living through science. And to use a bowling metaphor, I think sometimes the right medication can be a way to keep the bumpers on so you don't fall into the gutter. It's all too easy to do in times like these. All of Talkiatry's over 600 clinicians are in network with major insurers, so you can use your existing insurance instead of paying monthly subscriptions or out of network fees. Head to toky.com articles and complete the short assessment to get matched with an in network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's tochiatry.com articles to get matched in minutes. The American look was this wholesome, sporty, mass produced style for the wholesome, sporty, modern woman. And it was pioneered by a whole cohort of designers like Elizabeth Hawes and Bonnie Cashin and Zelda Wynn Valdez. Many of these designers were women, many of them were black women, but none were as famous as Claire McCardell. So this is our Claire McCardell collection in her lifetime. Claire McCardell was really, really famous.

[April Callahan]

Just the sheer amount of press that we're looking at here speaks to her presence within American fashion at the time. We're looking at like five linear feet of material that are just Clara's press clippings.

[Avery Trufelman]

I got a tour through the library of the Fashion Institute of Technology from April Callahan, who you might recognize as the co host of Dressed, the fantastic podcast about fashion. In her old day job, April was the special collections associate at FIT, which has this great collection of Claire McCardell clippings. Oh, that is so cute. Oh my God, I love that look. And that was Claire.

[April Callahan]

Yeah, I mean, these are Claire's designs. She did model her own designs though, quite frequently.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire McCardell was even on the COVID of Time magazine in 1955. She was a constant source of public fascination. Is this a profile of her?

[April Callahan]

Yeah, from Vogue.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire McCardell is the European's version of the Typical American girl whom you never saw but read about in print. Now we know who that girl was, the one who shared top billing with your beautiful tall buildings. It was Claire McCardell, exclamation point. Claire McCardell was sort of the ideal American. She was tall and broad shouldered and spunky, and she had this sort of can do attitude. And she never really fit in with her time. Like, she always wore her hair long, regardless of what everyone else was doing. Like, even in the 1930s and 40s when everybody else had their hair short, she was always doing her own thing. So her clothes also were always hardy and spunky and timeless and always very, very practical, even when they were elegant.

[April Callahan]

This is a classic Claire. It has a scooped neckline, very simple, but very elegant. It could be a sundress, but it could also be an evening gown.

[Avery Trufelman]

Or here's another classic Claire.

[April Callahan]

What's so Claire about this skirt? Are the two patch pockets on the front big pockets? Right? So the stripes on the skirt are running vertical, but the pockets are running horizontally. So it's like this very simple design element that's smart.

[Avery Trufelman]

A spunky, clever, all American style by a spunky, clever, all American girl. And Claire was always called a girl.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Every article I read that was written in her lifetime basically called her a girl.

[Avery Trufelman]

Author Elizabeth Evatts.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Dickinson again, she was still called a girl at 50.

[Avery Trufelman]

So that girl thing is, of course, super condescending, and it's really different from the refined lady designers of Europe, like Coco Chanel or Elsa Schiaparelli. But Claire McCardell also had a really different approach than they did. Claire had this more youthful, exuberant quality to her. She was always more of a tomboy.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

I think that growing up in rural Maryland with three brothers helped a lot because she was out running around in the countryside, and she had this great quote that said, a dress can be pretty, but climbing a tree in it, forget it.

[Avery Trufelman]

From a young age, Claire understood that her brothers could do things that she couldn't, in part because of what they wore.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Claire said, I want to go to New York after high school. And she's like, I want to make clothes.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire's father was baffled and would not allow it. And I see where he was coming from. The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire had just happened. The garment industry in New York was not a glamorous thing. It was a dangerous thing.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

She eventually wore her parents down and was on a train up to Parsons.

[Avery Trufelman]

And because, as you know, at the time, there were very few places that a young woman could live alone in New York City. Claire stayed in a place called the 3 Arts Club.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And the 3 Arts Club was meant for women any age, really. It wasn't just for college students, but there were a lot of college students there, and she had a safe place to live and come home to every night.

[Avery Trufelman]

And the 3 Arts Club ended up being really vital for Claire's career because another woman who lived at the 3 Arts Club Connected Claire with a manufacturer and a designer named Robert Turk.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And it's interesting because when I read originally about Robert Turk, I thought he was decades older than Claire, because the way that magazine articles and newspaper articles at the time discuss a young man as being already fully formed and made, and I was shocked to learn they were, like, a few years apart in

[Avery Trufelman]

age, and Clare was being called like a gal. But anyway, Claire began working with Turk.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Turk was this young man who was very entrepreneurial, started his own line. And what Turk was doing was he was copying. Like every other designer in the United

[Avery Trufelman]

States, Everyone copied Paris. That's just what was done. But there were two ways to copy the designs from Paris.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

The legal way to do it was you licensed it.

[Avery Trufelman]

You could work with a couture house to buy an edition of a design to make a licensed copy. This is what a lot of department stores did.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

But the way everybody really did it in New York was they stole it.

[Avery Trufelman]

New York designers would just go to a Paris Runway show and memorize what they saw, and then you would go

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

back out and you would quickly sketch it. And then the buyers and the department department store owners would take it and copy it.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire hated this.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

She did not love the copying. She didn't like the stealing. It made her deeply uncomfortable.

[Avery Trufelman]

She was often told to go to Bergdorf's or Bloomingdale's and quote, unquote, shop the store.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And what that meant was the manufacturers would send their young designers into the department stores to steal the licensed Parisian designs.

[Avery Trufelman]

She was spying, basically, and she didn't

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

want to do it. She was, like, not happy. And so she left, and she went and sat on a bench, and she just made up her own drawings and slid them into the stack.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire never admitted she had made up her own designs, But Turk just quietly put her in charge of the sample room. Instead of sending her out to be a spy again, he just made Claire the head of production and never said why.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Where he differed from everyone else is he took her seriously and he trained her and he showed her the ropes.

[Avery Trufelman]

Robert Turk recognized Clare's talent. In a world where Women were usually left out of any sort of mentorship opportunities. Robert Turk really took her under his

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

wing and because of that, she started to really understand the business of fashion.

[Avery Trufelman]

And then life is so wild. The Great Depression hit and in 1931, Robert Turk sells his company to another company called Townley.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Townley was this big sportswear manufacturer, so they've sold out.

[Avery Trufelman]

Now Robert Turk and Claire McCardell are working for this big company called Townley.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

The head of Townley was like such from central casting. His name was Henry Geiss. He was described as a harassed veteran of 7th Avenue.

[Avery Trufelman]

Geist did not care about beautiful clothes. He wanted to make good numbers.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

He was not interested in original designs. He wanted what was gonna sell. You know, just put a bow on it was what he would say.

[Avery Trufelman]

And then right in the middle of a collection for this big new manufacturer, Robert Turk dies. He does in this really tragic accident.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

He basically drowned trying to save his brother.

[Avery Trufelman]

Turk had taken his 11 year old brother swimming and died on the eve of his 29th birthday.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

So Turk dies suddenly in the middle of a collection. Geis had no choice. He had no choice. He had to turn to Turk's assistant,

[Avery Trufelman]

who is of course this 27 year old girl, Claire McArdle. She had to finish the collection and

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

she pulled it off and she pulled it off beautifully. And then she became a head designer.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire became the head designer of Townley Frocks, which is really impressive. But of course, Geis was not interested in Claire's original designs.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

She was still told that she needed to copy Paris.

[Avery Trufelman]

Even though Claire was begging Geis to let her design clothes that were more dynamic and more wearable, with more pockets.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

She was always dressing for her own needs as a modern woman in New York, a career girl. Literally that idea of I need to go from morning to night in the same dress and get on the subway. But what she started to do was she started to wear her own clothes,

[Avery Trufelman]

just wearing her own clothes around to work at Townley Frocks. And that was how in 1938, Claire had her first breakout design.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

And the only reason it was sold

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

was because she wore it to work

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

one day and accidentally bumped into the buyer from the department store, Best and Company.

[Avery Trufelman]

And this dress that this buyer saw Claire wearing was unlike any he had ever seen before.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

And what was so revolutionary about this dress is this one manufacturer said, my God, it has no front, it has no back.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Where do you zip it?

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

It had no structure.

[Avery Trufelman]

This dress would be called the monastic dress.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Her famous monastic dress was almost like a monk's cassock because you could belt it and fit it to your own body.

[Julie Elber]

The monastic is a dress that would go over your head. So we might think of it as a tent dress.

[Avery Trufelman]

This is sewing expert and fashion historian Julie Elber, who has, in her own

[Julie Elber]

words, this crazy obsession with Clara McCardell and her designs.

[Avery Trufelman]

Julie has an amazing collection of McCardell clothes.

[Julie Elber]

I've been on ebay a lot in the last 10 years, let's just put it that way.

[Avery Trufelman]

Wow. So a monastic dress is like a tent dress, but there are straps or belts to tighten it around your waist so you can fit it to your size.

[Julie Elber]

This is a beautiful dress. That's probably from 1949, 1950. That is kind of a Grecian version of the monastic dress.

[Avery Trufelman]

So it's almost like a sack. Like it doesn't have any zippers or buttons or anything.

[Julie Elber]

Exactly.

[Avery Trufelman]

It's hard to imagine that a dress this simple was so revolutionary, but it really was.

[Julie Elber]

And then has these beautiful leather belts that she designed as well. And so really chic, classy. You could wear it out in New York tonight.

[Avery Trufelman]

Right. You know, it was like, wow, something sexy and fun and easy. Didn't have to be tightly fitted.

[Julie Elber]

This is this lovely dress that is made for somebody who might be a little bloated some days, you know, the

[Avery Trufelman]

monastic dress took off.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

That dress was a smash success. It sold out.

[Avery Trufelman]

Georgia o' Keeffe was a big fan. Lauren Bacall was a big fan. Not of Claire yet, of the dress. At this point, no one knew Claire McCardell was behind the design.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

No one knew she made it because her name wasn't on the label. Because at that time, designers did not have their names on the labels of clothes. It was either the department store or it was the manufacturer.

[Avery Trufelman]

It was just Townley Frocks behind this design. But they really hammed up how genius this dress was.

[April Callahan]

It's the most talked of, most successful dress of the season.

[Avery Trufelman]

April Callahan in the Fashion Institute archives.

[April Callahan]

Again, everybody lost their mind. The monastic was a sensation because nobody had ever seen anything like it. Even Claire's boss, Howard Geist, said at the time no one had ever seen anything like Claire's designs.

[Avery Trufelman]

Although Claire was always very candid that she wasn't the first to make a belted sack dress, ever. She spoke very openly about her inspiration in Women's wear Daily in November 1940.

[April Callahan]

It says, Claire doesn't make any. I was first with it. Claims about fashion. Take the case of the monastic dress, for instance. There was an Algerian costume That so intrigued her that she made it up in a red woolen dress along the same loose lines, belting it with a black leather belt.

[Avery Trufelman]

So yes, Claire was inspired by an Algerian dress. Originality can be a little fuzzy in fashion. However, that said, almost as soon as the monastic dress came out, it was immediately, exactly, directly ripped off. It's in the advertisement for the monastic dress.

[April Callahan]

Success breeds imitation. Copies under various names have appeared all over the country at prices ranging from the obviously cheap to the extravagantly expensive.

[Avery Trufelman]

Wait, this is wild that it was introduced five weeks ago and they're like,

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

so aware that it's everywhere.

[April Callahan]

This is the phenomenon that this dress

[Avery Trufelman]

spurred, which is so funny, right? This is a dress by a company that until this point was just ripping off French designers. But as soon as they had their own original design ripped off, they were

[April Callahan]

like, no, it was copied all over the market, despite efforts to protect it.

[Julie Elber]

And then when she did the monastic dress, it got knocked off so much that her boss, Henry Geis, had a complete nervous breakdown.

[Avery Trufelman]

Historian and sewist Julie Elber, again, essentially, Gies wasn't prepared for such a huge hit for Townley frocks. He hadn't ordered enough fabric, he hadn't hired enough help. There was a huge backlog of orders for the monastic dress. And then Townley couldn't compete with their own knockoffs. The competition outran them. The monastic dress should have launched Townley into the stratosphere, but instead it hobbled them with legal fees. As McCardell wrote, Guy has made such a mess of everything.

[Julie Elber]

So she ironically having the most successful dress on 7th Avenue. She got fired.

[Avery Trufelman]

And then Claire just needed a job.

[Julie Elber]

She ended up working unhappily with Hattie Carnegie.

[Avery Trufelman]

For a while, Hattie Carne was not actually related to steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. That's exactly what she'd want you to think. She was just a Jewish immigrant who changed her last name to something that sounded impressive. So I'm sort of obsessed with her. She's kind of iconic. But ultimately, Hattie Carnegie was more of a society lady who liked to fancy herself a designer.

[Julie Elber]

Hattie took all the credit, but she had this wonderful stable of designers.

[Avery Trufelman]

The two women did not go well together. Hattie Carnegie was overseeing a precision glamorous tailoring shop and Claire McCardell was a modernist, deconstructing clothes to their simplest forms. It was not a fit. Like, for example, a Broadway actress who had come to Hattie Carnegie was apoplectic that Claire McCardell designed her a simple, pared down dress. Hattie Carnegie's customers wanted sequins and beads and found Claire's things too plain for the money. Carnegie knew her customers wanted to be poured and stitched right into their clothes. So Hattie Carnegie was miffed when Claire won a contest in the 1939 World's Fair.

[Julie Elber]

Claire and her letters would get all excited because somebody from. From the Times wanted to talk to her. And then instead, Ms. Carnegie stepped in and did the interview. So there were loggerheads quite a bit.

[Avery Trufelman]

But a weird benefit of working for society lady Hattie Carnegie was this.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Claire was among just a handful of designers and editors who were the last to see Paris before it was taken over by the Nazis.

[Avery Trufelman]

I mean, it was kind of a dumb move, like they kind of went to Paris. As World War II was breaking out,

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

the war was officially on in Europe. You know, it was that moment where everybody was waiting for what Hitler would do.

[Avery Trufelman]

Everyone was taking World War II very lightly. An attache at the French Embassy speculated, the Germans will attack this spring and be stopped. Then the Hitler machine will collapse. And a number of society ladies and designers and editors from American fashion magazines were like, we have to go to Europe and stop support the couture this season anyway.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And so Hattie's like, war be damned, we're going. And Hattie was Jewish, and her family's like, you're not going to Europe right now. This is insanity.

[Avery Trufelman]

Ugh. Hattie, you nut. I'm obsessed with you.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And she reluctantly stayed behind, and Claire went.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire's parents were understandably also worried that their daughter was walking into World War II. Claire wrote, Please don't worry about it. It's a wonderful opportunity, and I can break my neck skiing. Too. Way too cavalier. So la de da. Claire went to France and ended up spending 24 hours without water, food, or sleep. There were gas masks in the coat room at Maxim's.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And she wrote these just poignant letters home about what it was like to see Paris as this buildup to war was happening.

[Avery Trufelman]

She wrote, there are no bombs and no actual fighting at the front, but there is a sickness that is much worse than the war. It's the change, the end of something and not knowing what it will be after.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

A few months later, Paris went dark and it was gone.

[Avery Trufelman]

The center of global fashion disappeared among all the many more immediate and dire concerns of war. All the New York fashion designers had no idea where they were going to get next season's designs.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Where's the pipeline of ideas gonna come?

[Avery Trufelman]

You can hear Claire's brain start to churn with new ideas.

[April Callahan]

This is 1939.

[Avery Trufelman]

Can you read that top one?

[Julie Elber]

Yeah.

[April Callahan]

Claire McCardell, dress designer for Hattie Carnegie, predicted a swing away from the voluptuously feminine figure towards a boyish slenderness. Quote, wartime always ushers in a feeling for uniforms and fashion.

[Avery Trufelman]

She said as World War II would go on, Claire would design civil defense uniforms.

[April Callahan]

She did design uniforms. Yeah. She designed Red Cross uniforms. At one point.

[Avery Trufelman]

There was no way Claire would stay working for the society lady, Hattie Carnegie.

[Julie Elber]

She eventually left right around the time that the war was being waged in Paris and they couldn't go back to Paris anymore. And so then she was brought back into Townley.

[Avery Trufelman]

The new head of Townley Frocks cleverly lured Claire back.

[Julie Elber]

But Claire, considering that she had been fired a couple of times, when she came back, she put all of her cards on the table because she said, I'm going to have my name on the label, and I'm going to do my designs the way I want them to be done. And for somebody to be doing that on 7th Avenue was really, really pretty ballsy on her part.

[Avery Trufelman]

At the age of 35, Claire McCardell was the first designer to get her name on a 7th Avenue manufacturer's label. And she was the first designer to be given full creative control.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

She got her name stitched onto the label.

[Avery Trufelman]

In the 1940s, labels proudly said Claire McCardell for Townley Frocks.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

And one of the things that Claire started doing at Townley was she was moving very far away from the haute couture idea. She wanted to harness mass production.

[Avery Trufelman]

She said, we are a mass production country. We want to give the best to all people.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

All of us deserve the right to good fashion.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire made use of humble fabrics.

[Julie Elber]

Cotton, gingham, denim, that kind of thing.

[Avery Trufelman]

Not only because they were affordable.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

Anybody could wear it, and it could be mass produced.

[Avery Trufelman]

They were also sturdy.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

She was thinking about how to make something that was both beautiful, but that could also be washable. It could be wrinkle free.

[Avery Trufelman]

And this was wild to make dresses out of denim, like there was Lady

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Levi's in the 30s. But there was no denim in women's wear. It was a gendered fabric.

[Avery Trufelman]

And this resourcefulness became especially useful once the United States entered World War II in 1941, because the fabrics that Americans had access to became incredibly limited.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

The rationing was really strict. Very few fabrics were allowed to be used. Most were held for military use.

[Avery Trufelman]

General Limitation Order L85 banned fabric hungry fashions. No more pleats, no more French cuffs on Pants skirts had to be shorter

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

and tighter, and you couldn't have aprons.

[Avery Trufelman]

Belts couldn't be wider than 2 inches. Women's slacks couldn't have belts at all. The belted fabric, heavy monastic dress became a relic of the past.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And this is where McCardell just thrived, because she was really creative.

[Avery Trufelman]

A lot of designers were very annoyed by all these wartime constraints, but Claire McCardell loved them. She thought these limitations were fun challenges. And here's a perfect example.

[Julie Elber]

Shoes were rationed during World War II. And she figured out a way that you could get around it in that ballet shoes were not rationed. So she went to Capezio, the famous dance shoemaker, and said, would you make some that match my outfits?

[Avery Trufelman]

Ta da. The creation of the ballet flat, borrowed

[Julie Elber]

from the ballet dancer for Live Young Americans by Claire McCardell for her Townley Frocks collection.

[Avery Trufelman]

And during the war, out of necessity, Claire created one of her most famous designs, a version of the wrap dress. She was essentially recruited into it by iconic fashion editor Diana Vreeland.

[Julie Elber]

Claire had been called into Diana Vreeland's office.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Diana was very melodramatic. She's like, women are suffering, Claire. They're suffering.

[Avery Trufelman]

Middle and upper class women were suffering because now they had to do their own housework.

[Julie Elber]

And Vreeland said, we need something that socialites can wear, darling, when we're cleaning our houses, because all of our domestic help have left and gone through the defense plant.

[Avery Trufelman]

The families that used to hire an immigrant girl to do all the cooking and cleaning now couldn't, particularly at wartime.

[Julie Elber]

Domestic help started going to the factories, and that generation had to learn how to cook.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire herself had to learn how to cook for the first time. And she actually got really into it. She took cooking lessons. She got quite good.

[Julie Elber]

It was kind of a novelty. It was sort of like leading up to the whole Julia Child thing in the 60s, when all of a sudden, cooking became this much bigger deal in

[Avery Trufelman]

the us but this is why women were suffering, quote, unquote, because they needed clothes that they could both cook and entertain in.

[Julie Elber]

Here she is. She's going to clean her house now. She never had to do it before.

[Avery Trufelman]

You can see this in Harper's Bazaar. There's a spread featuring a socialite wife of a polo player.

[Julie Elber]

She says, I'm doing my own work. The ideal garment for it, for cooking, dusting, scrubbing, painting, pottering, or any odd job around the house, designed by Clara McCardell. Lord and Taylor has it.

[Avery Trufelman]

That's where Claire came in with her Brand new dress.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

It's called the popover because you could pop it over your clothes.

[Avery Trufelman]

It was a little wraparound dress, cute, charming, which could easily slip on for getting a little messier.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And this was one of the great wartime inventions that Claire made and that became wildly famous and sort of pioneered the wrap dress.

[Avery Trufelman]

Earlier versions even had an oven mitt attached. And the oven mitt is like attached

[April Callahan]

with a string to the actual dress.

[Avery Trufelman]

That is amazing.

[April Callahan]

So you don't lose it.

[Avery Trufelman]

And as April reminded me, it's not just an oven mitt. That mitt could be used to prod logs in the fire. It's anything.

[April Callahan]

It could be used in the kitchen, it could be used in the garden, it could be used doing chores. So it really was an all purpose style.

[Avery Trufelman]

Eventually, though, the oven mitt went away.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

The popover just became a wrap dress that, that she kept in her collection for decades.

[April Callahan]

Claire brought it back year after year after year after year in various different incarnations and in varying levels of formality.

[Avery Trufelman]

And the popover was affordable, especially compared to some of McCardell's designs she had made before the war.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Her dresses were selling for $30, which in 1930 wasn't cheap.

[Avery Trufelman]

Oh, my God, that's $582 today.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

But then when the war came, her most popular style, the popover, you could get for 3.95.

[Avery Trufelman]

That's like $78.

[Julie Elber]

And there's a lot of people in the world that can't afford to buy a McArdle because they weren't cheap.

[Avery Trufelman]

So Julie Elber says many, many people sewed their own popovers. Claire McCardell encouraged this.

[Julie Elber]

She released sewing patterns through the spadia Sewing Pattern Company in the early 50s through the mid-50s. And she was a believer in getting her designs out to the masses, because

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire McCardell's designs were really supposed to help you live better.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

She always put her closures on the side or in the front so women

[Avery Trufelman]

could dress themselves, which is like, duh. But back in Claire's time, a lot of dresses required someone else to zip you up or button you in.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

She said, you may live alone and like it, but if you can't get

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

your zipper up and you wrench out

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

your arm, that's just terrible.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire was a real advocate for independent living. She herself lived alone until she was 37, which is like, shockingly late in her time.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

She married very late.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

Marriage wasn't important to her.

[Avery Trufelman]

And when Claire did eventually marry, it wasn't a traditional marriage by any measure.

[Julie Elber]

Part of it was that she was really the breadwinner in the family. Her husband was kind of a ne' er do well.

[Avery Trufelman]

Really?

[Julie Elber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Avery Trufelman]

His first marriage had been to an heiress, so he had long since stopped working, even when he did not get a payout from his first wife's estate.

[Julie Elber]

When they got married, Claire became not just the breadwinner, but she was also stepmother to his kids while she's running this big business. But somehow they worked it out, and it was apparently a love match. Extremely handsome. Extremely handsome. Very, very socially adept.

[Avery Trufelman]

This was where Claire needed help. She was secretly painfully shy.

[Julie Elber]

He would take her out dancing at the rooftop of the St. Regis, and he knew a lot of people, and really, she was this very introverted person. And so he gave her this really wonderful social life.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire was living a completely modern life in the 1940s. She had these really strong convictions, and she macheted this new, uncharted path with her comfortable, practical clothes that allowed women to be free.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

Cue the villainous music. Here comes Dior, because they were getting cinched back in.

[Avery Trufelman]

Christian Dior made extraordinary clothes. I don't want to turn him into a cartoonish villain, but that guy really loved tiny, structured waists.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

He called it the wasp waist.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

He was like, how small could you get that waist?

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire McCardell was about fitting a woman's body, not making a woman fit her designs.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

And Claire got into a media spat with the French. She was angry. She said, why are we going backwards? What are we doing?

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Everything. Everything.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

Claire fought for to have a woman feel free and open in her body. We're going right back to this thing.

[Avery Trufelman]

But of course, Christian Dior became much more famous than Claire McCardell. And there are a few reasons why. And they're not all sexism. After the break. I hate paying rent. No one likes paying rent. It's like throwing money into a black hole. It doesn't do anything for you unless you use bilt. With Bilt, every rent payment earns you points that can be used towards flights, hotels, Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases, and so much more. And here's something really exciting for those of you finally achieving the dream of owning bilt. Members can earn points on mortgage payments for the first time. That means you can get rewarded wherever you live and unlock exclusive benefits from more than 45,000 restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies, and other neighborhood partners. I love using Lyft now and seeing the slashed discounted prices that I get because of bilt. Earn rewards and get something back wherever you live. Join the royalty program for renters at joinbuilt.com articles that's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com articles make sure to use my URL so they know I sent you. You I'm a small business owner. Maybe you're a small business owner. It's rough out there. You don't have time to spend your evenings guessing at tax forms or tracking down onboarding documents. Just let Gusto handle all of that for you so you can spend your time doing the work that people actually want you to do. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire, onboard and support your team from anywhere. I've been on teams that use Gusto and it's incredibly easy. It's just the go to place for automatic payroll tax filings, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers comp, 401k, you name it. Gusto makes it so easy to take care of everything. Try gusto [e-mail] and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free [e-mail] articles one more time gusto.com articles maybe when you are exhausted at the end of a long day, you dream of a delicious home cooked meal. But you don't have time to shop and you think, alas, I am not a chef. Each meal with HelloFresh comes with a card that has step by step instructions with pictures that show you how to do it. HelloFresh can help anyone cook a delicious home cooked meal quickly and easily, even with a few mistakes.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Ooh, that's falling out.

[Avery Trufelman]

I promise you if I can do it, anyone can do it. Great moment of truth. Mmm mmm. I made spicy vegetarian gochujang noodles all by myself. Thanks. HelloFresh Get a delicious home cooked meal on the table in minutes with no need to shop for Ingredients. Go to hellofresh.comarticles10fm to get 10 free meals plus a freeze willing knife worth $144.99 on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. That's hellofresh.com articles10fm

[April Callahan]

I think when you

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

think about the 50s that's what you picture is that Dior look, the hourglass

[Avery Trufelman]

form, that Dior shape that is the 1950s.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

That really tight waist, that poofed out skirt, that pretty dress.

[Avery Trufelman]

That look was the announcement that Paris was back baby.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

So 1947, Paris is trying to get its footing again. They want to reclaim their status as the center of the culture and fashion. And Christian Dior. One thing I did not realize is he was the same age as Claire. They were born a few months apart.

[Avery Trufelman]

Christian Dior was three months older than Claire McCardell.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Dior was actually new to fashion, newer to fashion than she was.

[Avery Trufelman]

But, you know, Claire was a girl.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

He had his first collection come out in 1947, and it was wildly anticipated because they needed something to save the haute couture tradition. And he wanted to, as he put it, save women from nature. He wanted to put them back on a pedestal. And in a lot of ways, what Dior wanted was to go back to his beloved mother's Victorian era. Like very structured clothing, women were now

[Avery Trufelman]

supposed to go back to being the shape of the number eight.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And he unleashed the new look. It's said that Carmel Snow was the one who called it, oh, Christian, it's such a new look. There's mixed attribution of where that first came, and it was. People went wild for it because it felt like, paris is back.

[Avery Trufelman]

It was the ultimate declaration that war was over.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

He created these long skirts, and the thing is, after the war, remember all the rationing and the tight, short skirts? When McCardell was asked by a fashion editor, what do you think is coming? She said, oh, we're gonna have really long, beautiful skirts. And she effectively did a new look design, which she was doing the long, full skirts again, but she wasn't putting anyone into this understructure.

[Avery Trufelman]

Yeah, There was a way to make this statement without the discomfort.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

One of his models in his new look corset fainted during preparation for the show. And he told it in this joke.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

Ha, ha ha.

[Avery Trufelman]

She fainted.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

People were getting hurt. Another thing that irritated her so much about Dior is you had to, like, get help to get dressed because there are all these little tiny buttons up the back. She's like, oh, we're going back. We're going back to this time where a woman is supposed to be trussed up and put on display. And Claire didn't see it as a new look. She saw it as a regression.

[Avery Trufelman]

You can't go back. You have to design for the lives American women lead today. This is what Claire McCardell said in 1955 to a promising young journalist.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

She got branded the gal who defied Dior in this article written by a young Betty Friedan. And Betty was noticing the way the door was closing shut on women again in the 50s, after the freedoms they were experiencing in the 30s and 40s.

[Avery Trufelman]

The Feminine Mystique would come out eight years later. But Claire McCardell didn't get to read it.

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

Claire died very young. She died at 52. She had what we now understand to be a genetic predisposition to colon cancer. At the time, they did not understand

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire McCardell died on March 22, 1958, only shortly after Christian Dior died in October of the previous year. These two designers had been born months apart, and they died months apart. They both, in their similar lifespans, completely upended what women wore and what we consider fashion to be. Well, this leads to, like, the big question, which is, why is Dior so much more famous than Claire McCardell? Why wasn't Claire McCarthy Carl Dior?

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

I think there's a lot of reasons for this. One is her label wasn't carried forward.

[Avery Trufelman]

Claire didn't own her own label. She had worked her way up at Townley.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

She was working for a 7th Avenue manufacturer, and she ended up getting to become a partner in that company. But then when she was gone, they didn't know what to do about it.

[Avery Trufelman]

I mean, there weren't any designers for ready to Wear. There weren't names on mass production clothes. That was new. There was no protocol here.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

So Claire McCardell, when she died, Townley tried to keep her label alive probably

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

for about a year, year and a half.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

But what they quickly learned was that they at the time didn't have a

[Fashion Historian / Commentator]

lot of models for what it looked like to keep someone's name going in

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

a ready to wear line in America and have another designer. But also they just didn't know how to replace her. She was somewhat irreplaceable. And so they made the decision to let the line die.

[Avery Trufelman]

She pioneered the fashion designer as we understand it today.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

And so because she was first, it also meant that there was no pattern for what you did after a designer died. But I also think that what I realized in researching this book is we forgot all the names of the women of this era.

[Avery Trufelman]

Elizabeth Hawes, Zelda Wynn Valdez, Bonnie Cashin, Ann Lowe, many, many more.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

Unfortunately, they weren't prioritized in the storytelling.

[Avery Trufelman]

None of these American women could have been Dior. Dior was capable of owning his own business, which was high fashion. It was haute couture. It was considered high art.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

I think that Dior's name carried on because his label carried on.

[Avery Trufelman]

But can I tell you something? Dior's label almost didn't carry on. After Dior passed away, his company was barely limping through the 1960s, when hippie fashion had taken over and there were fewer customers clamoring for custom ball gowns. The brand survived by licensing out its name, slapping Dior on sunglasses and bags and ties and men's shirts. And by the early 80s, 90% of Dior's sales were licenses. They held 260 licenses worldwide for products made by other companies, usually made cheaply with shoddy construction that were not up to luxury standards. Dior lost all quality control. They developed a terrible reputation, and their finances fell into horrible disarray. And so Dior was bought out. And it lay in the bowels of a big holding company until 1984, when this holding company was bought by an elegant French real estate developer named Bernard Arnault, who immediately began to clean house and fired 8,000 workers and ditched anything in the holding company that wasn't Dior. He found Dior this diamond in the rough and he polished it and he used it as his anchor to create the biggest luxury empire in history. Lvmh, the company that owns most designer brands and Sephora and all the duty free stores. And it has made Bernard Arnault one of the top 10 richest men in the world. So that's another reason why we all know DeOrr's name. Nothing like that has happened with Claire McCardell, but it's not really about just like superficially reviving her name or fixing the label back on a dress again.

[Elizabeth Evatt Dickinson]

This was a movement that was always about more than clothes. It was really about autonomy and freedom and a capacity to choose how you wanted to live your life.

[Avery Trufelman]

And so while it might not be a full blown revival of the Claire McCardell brand, I think Julie Elber is doing exactly what Claire McCardell would have wanted.

[Julie Elber]

I got together with my friend Jenny Rushmore, who runs the Cashmerette pattern company.

[Avery Trufelman]

With the Cashmere pattern company, you can buy the patterns as a PDF and print them out so anyone from anywhere can order them.

[Julie Elber]

So people are making these all over

[Avery Trufelman]

the world now, and Julie has helped them make a version of a pattern of Claire McCardell's monastic dress.

[Julie Elber]

These are a couple of different versions of this dress that I made from

[Avery Trufelman]

a size 0 to size 32.

[Julie Elber]

And now people are making them as party dresses and wearing them.

[Avery Trufelman]

You could wear it to a wedding, you could wear it to the beach. Oh, I love this.

[Julie Elber]

Isn't it great? It's great. Doesn't it feel good too?

[Avery Trufelman]

It's beautiful.

[Julie Elber]

Yeah.

[Avery Trufelman]

And this dress looks just as timeless, just as elegant, just as comfortable as it did when Claire McCardell first wore it to work 88 years ago. Articles of interest is made by me, Avery Trufelman with music by Ray Royal, Sasami and Lullatone mixed by Morgan Flannery, mastered by Pedro Rafael Rosado, both of the super talented team over at PRX. Thanks for your help guys. Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson's book once again is called Claire McCardell the Designer who Set Women Free. It's really amazing. April Callahan's podcast, if you don't already listen to it. I can't believe you don't already listen to it. It's called Dressed and Julie Elbert is a sewing genius. If you want to print out a version of her monastic dress pattern and make it for yourself, I will have a link up@articlesofinterest substack.com Radiotopia from PRX.