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Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today because we get to talk about, I think, quite an interesting book just out in 2025 from Simon & Schuster, titled Clara McCardell, the Designer who Set Women Free. Now we have the author of that book with us today, Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson, to tell us about this designer who did all sorts of things. This is where ballet flats come from. Mix and match separates, wrap dresses, hoodies, leggings, denim. There's a whole bunch of things that Clara McArdle did for women's fashion and so rather a lot for us to discuss. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining me.
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, I'm very pleased to have you. Could we start off by you introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book.
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
Of course. So I am a journalist and an author. I live in Maryland in the US and for many years I've written about design and culture, architecture and material culture. And this is my first foray into writing extensively about a fashion designer. What really interested me about McCardell is I saw an exhibition of her clothes back in the late 90s, and McCardell's primary time period of design was the 30s, 40s, and 50s. But when I, as a young woman saw her clothes, I could not believe how timeless they were. And I didn't realize that much of what hangs in my closet today is thanks to the design ingenuity of McArdle. So I was always curious why her name had gotten forgotten.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, I mean, it is really quite something once one starts to look at the things that she did in the fashion industry. Why, we don't already know so much about her, but we in fact don't know that much about her. So let's go back to the beginning. You discuss in the book her childhood, and I was particularly bemused to read that her childhood nickname was Kick. So can you tell us a little bit about her family background, her childhood, and how she ended up with that moniker?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
I think her nickname tells us a lot about how she ended up becoming who she became. So McCardell was born in 1905 in Frederick, Maryland. It's a small town, it's rural, but it's not very remote, meaning it has a kind of small town feel to it. But it did have a lot of cultural institutions. And McArdle, as a young child was absolutely exposed to arts and culture. But she was also a kid who liked to run around outside with her three brothers. And when you're the only girl playing in the boys games, sometimes your foot is more useful than your words. So McArdle was known to stand up for herself early on and place a well placed kick on a shin if necessary. But one of the things to remember about this time period, in the early 1900s, of course, is that we didn't have ready to wear like we have today. So most people were either making their own clothes by sewing them from a pattern or in the case of Claire McCardell, the family could afford to bring in a dressmaker twice a year to help make their wardrobes. And McArdle's mother was very fashionable. She. She loved to pull all of her clothing designs for herself from Paris, which was the primary design inspiration for everyone. Even in America. And McArdle, very early on, really loved the act of making clothes. So just the construction of clothes was something that she really enjoyed. But she also noticed early on how her clothes were quite different from those of her brothers. Her brothers got to wear pants. They got to have pockets. Their clothes seemed a lot more practical. And McArdle, who was very sporty and outgoing, always wondered why a woman's clothes couldn't be both beautiful and practical. And that was a question she had very early on, even as a kid.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hmm. Really interesting to understand kind of how early this develops. But obviously she doesn't stay there particularly long. Obviously, she grows up and goes places. So can you help us understand when and why she up in New York City and then in Paris?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
So in the 1920s, McArdle's a teenager. She very much wants to go and be what at the time was called a costume designer. So in America at the time, there really wasn't the fashion designer that we understand today. There were no designers making their own brands, having their own labels in their clothes. In fact, most of what America did at the time, like New York's garment district, was copied Paris designs. And the labels were usually the manufacturers or the department stores. But McArdle had this vision, this dream of being someone who could originate her own ideas and maybe one day even have her own name in the label of her clothes, which is pretty audacious when you realize this didn't exist yet. So she's sort of envisioning the career of a designer before there was such a thing. So she convinces her parents to let her go and study at what is now the Parsons School of Design. And, of course, learning to be a designer in the 1920s meant you copied from the best. So she was sent abroad to spend a year in Paris studying how the haute couture or the hand custom designers, those famous names like Coco Chanel, how they made clothes. And she loved her time in Paris and loved learning about the elegant and exquisite construction that was used. But she always had it in her mind that there was a better way to make clothes for American women like herself.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Okay, that's interesting that she's got these ideas, but as you said, the profession she sort of wants to have doesn't quite exist yet. So how does she make a living when she goes back to New York?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
Well, it's interesting because in Paris, one of the things she was taught to do was a common practice, which I was surprised to learn about in my research, which is that American designers quote, unquote would just steal from Parisian designers. McArdle was trained how to go into a fashion show in Paris, memorize what was coming down that Runway, run out and quickly sketch it and design it so that American manufacturers could copy it. When she comes back to New York, she still very much wants to have a career on her own. But, again, it's hard to have. She's a young woman with a big dream for something that doesn't exist. So she starts getting jobs in these really bustling and busy garment district lofts in New York. This is the place where there's clothes being made, and fashion shows don't really exist yet, really. It's just buyers coming in from department stores to look at what the manufacturers are making. And McArdle took all kinds of odd jobs for several years, including modeling clothes in department stores and working at the lower level of manufacturing to try and just learn the business.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Okay, that definitely gives her, I imagine, tons of insights into all sorts of things of marketing and kind of what happens on the sales floor. What happens, as you said, in manufacturing. How then does she sort work up from there? What are the things she sort of aims for to get towards that goal of having her name in the labels?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
This is a question that really was at the center of my inquiry into this book is I wanted to understand how it is a woman who was born in 1905 in America, outside the world of fashion, would rise to the greatness that she did. And this was a time when a woman couldn't even open her own bank account in America without a male signatory. So one of the things I loved Learning about with McArdle is how she kind of cleverly and diligently chipped away at prevailing dress codes and prevailing business practices. So, for instance, she ends up working for a manufacturer called Townley Frocks. And she spends years trying to get pockets into the clothes that Townley sells to women, because her male bosses didn't think that a woman wanted pockets. And so McCardell was constantly pushing back against these norms, and she was designing in ideas that a woman like herself, navigating New York, trying to live a life and build a career, could wear and be comfortable in. And she did this by also kind of sneaking her designs in and showing them to buyers without her bosses knowing. And in this way, she starts to slowly build a reputation as a really revolutionary and thoughtful designer that buyers of department stores became interested in.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Pockets are obviously a great place to start, but what were some of the other things that she was pushing for at this Point that started to make that name.
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
Well, she grew up at a time when a woman was expected to really truss herself up into her clothes. Her mother's generation, they were putting on corsets, they were putting on these understructures that would fit a dress and shape the dress and make the woman's body kind of shaped right. So the silhouette, the way the dress looked on the woman, was really created through this rigid structure like corsetry. McArdle had this idea that, believe it or not, maybe the clothes should be comfortable and maybe the clothes should fit a woman's body. And so she started to think about the ways in which she could create not just these one off really expensive dresses for wealthy women, but these comfortable, casual, sportswear type clothes, dresses and pants that would fit a woman's body, that could size to her body and that were easy to put on. So in addition to things like pockets, McCardell is thinking about where she places zippers and buttons. Because she said, you may live alone and like it, but if you wrench out your arm trying to zip up a back zipper, you're not going to like it very much. This, you know, notion that you didn't have to wear fancy clothes all day. You could wear stuff that was comfortable and that you could put on that was washable, that didn't wrinkle. And she was thinking of every experience that a woman might have.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that definitely sounds a lot more adapted to the life she was certainly living. And other women at the time were given this was it were all of these things she was pushing for and getting put in kind of immediately recognized as, oh, this is so great, or was it maybe not so positive straight away?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
Not at all positive straight away, because she was designing things that weren't the norm for manufacturing or for merchandising at the time. So the example that I think of is in 1934, Claire McCardell is the designer of an American manufacturing company and she's being sent over to Paris twice a year to look at the Parisian designs. But in her own time, she's designing clothes for herself that look quite different from what her bosses are wanting her to design, which is copy Paris. So McCardell was traveling a lot and she was tired of lugging around these huge steamer trunks that you had to put onto ships to make the transatlantic journey. And she had this idea about creating a system of clothing almost like men's suiting, where you had a similar material and you could have pants and a jacket and a blouse and a skirt. And they could all mix and match so that you could create multiple outfits out of just a handful of items. And she effectively created what are now known as mix and match separates, or the capsule wardrobe. This would go on to become the foundation of modern fashion. It's what we all wear today. But at the time, buyers did not know what to do with it. And so it took her almost a decade to get that idea into the mainstream of America.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hmm. Yeah, that's quite a long time. But as you said, there were a number of reasons why it wasn't easy to get to that point. Thinking then about some of the other things that she was pushing for as well. What potential did she see in sports clothes? And why was this also something quite unusual for her to look at?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
So sportswear, I think today many of us hear that word and we think of maybe athleisure wear, right, the kind of lululemon leggings that wear when we go to the gym or something. But in the world of fashion, sportswear at the time was this catch all. And really what it was was it was casual, comfortable clothes that you could wear in your casual, comfortable Life. But what McArdle thought of was the ways in which that dresses and suits and other outfits might be able to become adaptable and. And worn in public spaces, in offices. Women were starting to go to work more, and there was the question of what does a woman wear to the office? The other thing McArdle was really interested in was modernizing the swimsuit. When she was a little girl, the outfits you were meant to wear on a public beach looked more like dresses than the swimwear we have today. It was really difficult to swim in it. And this is a crazy fact I didn't know about. Women in America were required to wear wool swim stockings on public beaches in the 1920s, because heaven forbid you see a woman's legs. And McCardell was rejecting all of these rules, and she was starting to design playsuits, as they were known, which is things you could wear exercising. She was designing these really elegant and beautiful but practical bathing suits. And again, she was thinking about a way that a woman could live a life. Take a subway, go swimming on the weekend, go to the office and have clothes that worked for her life.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Definitely a more, as you said, athleisure is all over the place now, but not so much then. So she's trying these things. She's making, as you've mentioned, kind of some waves. They're getting some reactions that are not always positive, but definitely making some Progress. How then do we get to the point of McArdle having her name on the label? And what does World War II have to do with it?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
So World War II shuts America off from Europe. When the war starts, it means that Paris can no longer export its fashion ideas to America and the American designers can no longer go abroad. And this means a lot of things. It doesn't just mean the end of the design stealing from Paris. It also means that there's fabrics that aren't coming over, like laces and silks and lots of things that the fashion industry had relied on in order to make their clothes. So World War II really opens up this opportunity, not only for American designers like McArdle to define themselves, but but for the American textile industries to start to produce cottons and rayons and human made textiles that can take the place of the textiles and fabrics they were getting from Europe. So McArdle really thrives during the war, in large part because she does have that pragmatism that she believes that you can be really creative within construct. And so she was told, for instance, you can't use leather. Leather is now rationed. So she had an idea to create these flat shoes that women could wear using fabrics. And she went to a ballet shoe designer, and in the process, she invents ballet flats. She's also asked to create dresses that might work for women who have to do housework or extra work around the home or go to the factories now that their spouses have been, you know, shipped abroad for the war. And this is the moment where McArdle starts introducing fabrics that had never been used in women's wear. For instance, she makes a wrap dress out of denim, and she starts to do things like put hoods on sweaters. And today we think of it as the hoodie, of course, but back then, the idea of a hoodie on a woman's outfit really was quite shocking and new. And so she really used this moment to start to advance ideas that were really practical. And the American women loved it. They really loved not only the elegance of her designs, but the fact that they could wear these clothes all day, wash them, and get them at affordable prices.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
And she was able to do all these things because the war had shut down the Paris copying. And so it was opened space for her to have a label.
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
It did. It opened space for her to have a label and she asked for it. She fought for years to get her name on her label. And when she negotiated a contract with her manufacturing firm, they knew that she was a star in terms of her capacity to read the marketplace. And she insisted that her name be on her label. And she became the first designer, male or female, in the ready to wear industry to have their name on their own clothes.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
I mean, that in and of itself would be a reason to remember her more than we do. But also obviously, the ballet flats and the hoodies and the pockets, there's a whole bunch going on here. But of course, the question of a name used in that sort of public capacity as a brand, obviously, as you said, it was the first time, male or female, that anyone had done it. But for women, there are some extra challenges there. I mean, we even still today have questions around if a woman gets married, does she change her name? That's often way more of an expectation for women than men. What does that mean professionally, in terms of how you're known in the workplace? This is obviously a time where that's even way more the case. So how did all this work for her in terms of her personal life? Did she get married? How did she navigate that? What was the sort of personal life career calculation like for her?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
It's such an interesting question, and to your point, one that women continue to grapple with, Micarta was born at an interesting moment. You know, she lived through the 20s. We passed the 19th amendment and women had the right to vote. But during the Depression, it was interesting here, there was a big debate about whether or not women should keep their names. And there was a back and forth about that. During the depression, during the 30s in America, McArdle always knew she wanted to have her own name. So when she Had a relationship, longtime boyfriend. She did not get married until quite late in life. She didn't marry until almost 40. And she chose not to change her name on her label. And so that was a really progressive thing to do to be able to maintain her maiden name on her work product. She did, interestingly enough, get called by her married name in the society pages because, you know, the. The common practice was for a woman to be called by her husband' name. But professionally, McCardell always remained Claire McCardell.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And that's, in fact, why you and I have been calling her that the whole time and will continue as we move through her life, too. I wonder if we're talking, though, about her career at this point. We mentioned the war, and actually, there was something else I wanted to discuss about that, because, of course, famously, the war impacted loads of things, including clothing restrictions, fabric materials, that kind of stuff. How did she adapt to that? Given, you know, I mean, that's quite a challenge, really.
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
Yeah. And. And it's interesting because a lot of her cohorts, particularly the male designers, were quite upset when the US Government began rationing clothes, and it meant that a manufacturer could only have so much fabric or couldn't use certain things, like wool, which were necessary for military uniforms. And so McArdle was incredibly creative. She started making pants out of mattress ticking that looked really elegant. She started using surplus materials from the military, including parachute material that she turned into a dress. She always had a way of being quite clever with how she turned, like, a construct, like, or a ration into something that actually was beautiful and useful for women. And. And she was continuing to remind women that even as fashion evolves, even as new styles come out, you don't have to throw out all your old clothes and buy new ones. She was very much about teaching women to find their individual style and not worry so much about trying to keep up with fashion. McArdo liked to say that fashion is fickle, and I always love this idea of someone whose job it is and whose career it is to make a living off of selling clothes, empowering women to have a relationship where they don't have to just buy new products all the time. And McArdle really, like, pushed herself to be creative enough to make the clothes that women needed and wanted so that they would return to her label when they did need something new. Hmm.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
How did that. Did that. Was that successful then? Not just for rationing, but kind of, as we're thinking about sort of. I don't want to say competition, but, I mean, it is literally market forces competition with other designers. Right. Coming out of World War II, we've got the new look and Dior being the big new name on the scene, did that mean that she was kind of no longer the star or was she able to still be a big deal in this era?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
McCardell was so famous by the late 1940s that she was a go to for most people when it came to asking questions about American fashion. She would be on the COVID of Time magazine. She was routinely in Life magazine. As television became more prevalent, she was on TV and she was interviewed on the radio. And so McCartle really was seen as the progenitor of American fashion and of style. But to your point, after the war, you see Paris return and Christian Dior puts out his first ever collection in 1947, what became known as the New Look. But McArdle didn't think of it so much as a new look. She saw what Dior was doing as a regression to the old way of structuring a woman's body to the clothes. And that's because Dior very much believed that a woman's body should have that perfect hourglass figure. He created a corset aiming to cinch a woman, ideally, into an 18 inch waist, which, if you think about it, kind of takes your breath away just trying to imagine having that tight 18 inch waist. Dior said he wanted to, quote, save women from nature. But McArdle always wanted to set women free. And so she became really a counter narrative to this very highly structured Christian Dior look. And the two of them were often pitted against one another in the media in terms of her having a style approach that was a lot more comfortable, casual and realistic. And Dior having this approach of being highly structured and very, very feminine in its silhouette. He said it made Coco Chanel once said about Dior, he doesn't dress women, he upholsters them. And I think McArdle would have agreed with that assessment. She was not a fan of bringing the corset back into women's lives.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And just to be clear here, we're not reading between the lines of going because we still like her styles today. Therefore, her focus was on empowering women. Even though she didn't say that, because she did say that.
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
Right.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
This was all pretty explicit in the media stuff that she did, that it was about empowering women.
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
Right. She did say it, and she was interviewed routinely about this subject. In fact, I write in my book about one radio interview where when Dior's new look came out. Women were complaining that they couldn't breathe, that it hurt so much to put on the corset. It felt like a straight jacket. And one interviewer asked her, claire, do you think women should suffer for fashion? And she said, absolutely not. The goal of fashion is to create a way for a woman to live her true life. She believed if you were comfortable and felt good in your clothes, then you could get on with what you were doing. I mean, we've all had that moment, right, where we've worn the wrong thing, where we feel uncomfortable in what we're wearing, and it's hard to be in the moment. It's hard to pay attention to what's going on around you because you're uncomfortable. And McCardell was very vocal about her goal to create a wardrobe that women could live full lives in.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, I definitely want to make sure that that's clear. This isn't something we're reading back into the record. It was very explicit at the time. Let's start talking, then, about some of the reasons that we don't know her as well now. How did she die and what happened to her label and her work after her death?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
She unfortunately died quite young. She died at the age of 52, when she was really at the height of her career. It was 1958. She got a cancer diagnosis and died rather quickly. And unfortunately, there wasn't a plan put into place about what to do after she died. Again, McCardell was building the career of the modern ready to wear fashion designer kind of as it was happening. She was building the bridge as she was walking across it. There really was no precedent at the time for continuing the label of a deceased ready to wear designer. Unlike Christian Dior, who, interestingly died within three months of McArdle, their lives didn't map out kind of similarly in some ways. But Dior had this long history of Parisian haute couture behind him, and he had already named a predecessor, a young man named Yves Saint grand, who went on to, of course, be quite famous in his own right. So when McArdle died, her business partners weren't sure how to continue the label, and they tried for a little while, but it just didn't work, and they ended up reverting the trademark back to her family, and her name was never on clothes after.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Huh. And so we wouldn't necessarily have come across it more recently and then gone, ooh, who is this person on the label? That definitely would be a reason why her name has been forgotten. Are there any other reasons that we don't know about her that we haven't mentioned yet.
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
You know, it's interesting because she's been forgotten by the general public. But one place she hasn't been forgotten is in fashion. You know, Calvin Klein credits her with inventing American fashion. Contemporary designers like Tory Burch and others all say that she remains inspiration for their work. And I think that there are a couple of reasons why we, the general public, forgot her. One is that her designs have become so essential as to become invisible. I mean, think about mix and match separates and wrap dresses and hoodies and ballet flats. They've just become part of the aesthetic of contemporary fashion, and they've been separated from her name. My goal with this book really wasn't just to, you know, sew her name back on the label of the clothes she made, but to remind readers, too, that these clothes we take for granted today began with a very important and revolutionary meaning. They really did begin at a moment when women were trying to assert themselves both in public life and civic life and careers. And in the 1950s, post war, there was a backlash to women having careers and being independent and autonomous in the way that McArdle was. One of the writers who did A profile on McArdle in the 1950s was a journalist named Betty Friedan. And Betty Friedan would go on to write a very famous second wave feminist.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Book called the Feminine Mystique.
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
Yes, the Feminine Mystique. And, you know, the Feminine Mystique was really about the ways in which women's lives were being constricted again. And it's so interesting when you think about that visual of the women being constricted back again into Dior's tight, corseted hourglass figure, that fashion really is this excellent sort of signal to cultural intention and social movements. And so, unfortunately, McArdle, like many women, were lost to history. I think we don't do a great job of telling women's stories. And so it isn't just McArdle's name that we lost. It's all of the other women who birthed American fashion in the 30s and 40s, who invented things like New York Fashion Week and the role of the publicist. There's a whole constellation of women that I introduce readers to in my book. And, you know, it's partly why right now the Hidden Histories of Women are such a popular read, because we're hungry for these stories that have been lost. And I think in addition to her dying young, we just don't do a great job of keeping women's stories Alive.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, and that's why we have books like this. Right. As you mentioned. But before we conclude our conversation about the book, I was wondering if there is anything in particular that comes to mind that you came across in researching or writing this that really surprised you. Sometimes this is just a small detail that doesn't make it into the final version, but anything that you particularly enjoyed as a surprise in the process of getting to this point?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
Well, there were so many, I will say, as readers will enjoy in the book. Her personal life was something that I did have a lot of questions about why she didn't marry who she married. Her husband was a bit of a character. He wasn't always above board in his ethics. He was married before and had this surprising marriage to this international. A famous heiress to a sugar fortune. And so there's just the joy of a. As a researcher of. Of finding these stories about a person's life. But I think that what really struck me about McArdle in being able to go through her archive and read her letters and see what she saved as a person. You know, archives are so interesting because they tell us a lot about who that person was by what they chose to keep. And she was so famous that she had letters from Joan Crawford and Lauren Bacall and Greta Garbo and President Truman honored her with awards. She was so famous in her lifetime. But she kept these stacks of letters from women who wore her clothes. And some of them were women who had a problem with her clothes, including one woman who had a McArdle bathing suit that didn't fit well and fit and failed her on a trip to Italy. And I thought to myself, why did she keep that letter? And I realized it's because, again, the experience of women mattered so much to McArdle. I can't say exactly what she did after reading that letter, but I suspect she went back and she figured out what went wrong with that swimsuit. Was it the design? Was it the fabric? Was it who made it? Because it really did ultimately matter to her how everyone felt in the clothes that she created. And it would have really bothered her that someone didn't have the best experience wearing her clothes. And I think that tells you a lot about who she was and who she remained, even as she was at her time, incredibly famous.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah. No, that's a very telling anecdote. So thank you for sharing that. And I think it's a good place as well to wrap up our conversation on the book, leaving me with just the final question of where you might have set your sights next. Now that the book is out in the world, any upcoming projects, whether or not they're related, whether or not they're books that you want to give us a brief sneak preview of?
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
I have been thinking so much again about objects and design and women's lives and the ways in which what we design kind of is human intention writ large. So I can tell you that my next project is again, looking at a design world. I can't tell you exactly what it is just yet, but I hope to be back when it's official and ready to go. But it really is again that intersection of design, women's lives, women's independence, and, yeah, you know, just looking at our experience, our daily experiences and how they're informed by design. And I really look forward to this next project coming together.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, and we all look forward to seeing what it is. But of course, in the meantime, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Claire McCardell, the designer who Set Women Free, published by Simon and Schuster in 2025. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
Elizabeth Evitz Dickinson
It was such a pleasure to be here. Thank.
Dr. Miranda Melcher
You.
New Books Network
Episode Title: Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, "Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free" (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson
Date: September 5, 2025
In this engaging episode, Dr. Miranda Melcher interviews journalist and author Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson about her new book, Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free. The conversation explores the life, legacy, and revolutionary impact of American fashion designer Claire McCardell. Dickinson details McCardell’s early influences, inventive spirit, the challenges she faced breaking into the industry, and her lasting impact on contemporary fashion and women’s lives. The episode also delves into the reasons McCardell's legacy faded from public memory and the ongoing relevance of her work in discussions about fashion, feminism, and design.
"I couldn't believe how timeless [her clothes] were. And I didn't realize that much of what hangs in my closet today is thanks to the design ingenuity of McCardell."
— Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson [02:25]
“She kind of cleverly and diligently chipped away at prevailing dress codes and prevailing business practices... She was constantly pushing back against these norms.”
— Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson [09:20]
"She became the first designer, male or female, in the ready-to-wear industry to have their name on their own clothes."
— Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson [20:30]
"Fashion is fickle, and I always love this idea of someone whose job it is...empowering women to have a relationship where they don’t have to just buy new products all the time."
— Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson [23:32]
"Dior said he wanted to, quote, save women from nature. But McCardell always wanted to set women free."
— Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson [26:01]
“Absolutely not. The goal of fashion is to create a way for a woman to live her true life.”
— Claire McCardell, as cited by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson [27:22]
"It would have really bothered her that someone didn’t have the best experience wearing her clothes. And I think that tells you a lot about who she was..."
— Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson [34:56]
“Why couldn’t a woman’s clothes be both beautiful and practical?”
— Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson summarizing McCardell’s lifelong question [04:30]
“She was building the bridge as she was walking across it.”
— Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson on McCardell’s career path [28:45]
“My goal with this book wasn’t just to sew her name back on the label... [but] to remind readers... that these clothes we take for granted today began with a very important and revolutionary meaning.”
— Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson [30:45]
The conversation is warm, reverent, and illuminating, combining historical detail with a timely reflection on women’s contributions and erasure in design and culture. Dickinson and Melcher’s accessible, thoughtful dialogue ensures that even listeners with little fashion knowledge come away with a deep appreciation for Claire McCardell’s legacy and the broader issues of recognition in women’s history.