Claire McCardell

Via Fashion Encyclopedia

The Fashion Institute of Technology houses one of my favorite museums in the city. Regular free exhibitions highlight exquisite examples of clothing design through the ages. At a recent exhibition of American fashion, a name kept popping up next to refreshingly simple, yet stylish garments. Everything seemed clean and playful. And so smart. Smart in both the British sense of stylish -- but also smart in the sense of intelligence. Clothing that was functional, yet beautiful, understated, but not boring.

Via Metropolitan Museum of Art

The designer was Claire McCardell (1905 - 1958), whom I now understand to be one of the most influential figures in American fashion history.

Via Ye Olde Fashion

One of the first American designers to have name recognition, she is often compared to Frank Lloyd Wright for her quintessentially American style. She did for fashion what he did for architecture: created pieces formed by function, inspired by the lifestyles of their future owners. She was known from the 30s to the 50s for designing functional, affordable, casual, and stylish women’s sportswear. Called the creator of the “American Look,” she is considered the founder of American ready-to-wear fashion.

Via Decades

"The gal who defied Dior" had a democratic approach that rejected the formality of French couture that was the pinnacle of mid-century fashion. Her simple, inexpensive clothes, capitalized on World War II restrictions on the availability of French fashions and fabrics.

Via Corbis

In a 1955 Time cover story on McCardell, the author argues that the American concept of leisure had shifted from serenity and conspicuous wealth (as identified by Thorsten Veblen) to something else: 

". . . in the U.S., the meaning of elegance has changed as much as the meaning of leisure. It is a leisure of action—barbecue parties in the backyard, motor trips along country roads and across the country, weekend golf and water skiing. From America's lively leisure has evolved a new, home-grown fashion, as different from Paris fashion as apple pie from crepes suzette."

Via Flickriver

McCardell did owe some debt to France. In her second year at Parsons, McCardell attended the school's branch in Paris, where she studied techniques of the couture houses, such as Madeleine Vionnet.

Via CMadeleine's

McCardell became known for her use of common, natural-fiber fabrics such as cotton, denim, and jersey (even in eveningwear). She was the first to use zippers, popularize leotards, put spaghetti straps on evening gowns, and was the originator of mix-and-match separates, pedal-pushers, bareback summer dresses, and strapless swimsuits. In 1942 she started the ballet flat craze after wartime shortages forced her to put her models in fabric-covered Capezio dance slippers.

Via Metropolitan Museum of Art

She simplified evening wear and dressed up day wear. The beauty of McCardell's clothes lay in the cut which produced a clean, functional garment. Her clothes are simple and clean of line, with "buttons that button and bows that tie." To McCardell, garments needed to have a reason and comfort was an intrinsic part of style.

Via Shrimpton Couture

McCardell was very interested in the draping and styling of classical Greece and Rome. Her clothes accentuated the body but did not require structured undergarments, such as padded shoulders, girdles, corsets, and crinolines. 

Via Metropolitan Museum of Art

McCardell's clothes reflected the changes in her lifetime: jazz, realism, Rosie the Riviter, and postwar optimism. Revolutionary in their time, her clothing married athletic freedom with style. 
  

Pantsuit from 1938 (!) Via Ye Olde Fashion

Clothes designed by Claire McCardell are now held by museums across the country. Her ideas have so influenced and pervaded contemporary fashion that Life magazine, in 1990, named her one of the 100 most important Americans of the twentieth century. Four years later, New York Times senior fashion writer Bernadine Morris even dubbed her "this country's finest designer."

Via Metropolitan Museum of Art

Coco Chanel is purported to have said, "Elegance is refusal." But I think McCardell's work represents "Elegance is ease." Or at least, in McCardell's hands, it looked easy.

Via Metropolitan Museum of Art

It means a lot to me to to think of McCardell defining and encapsulating an American look. She didn't live that long ago. Though the 20th century was pretty indisputably the American century, we are still a young country. When we are at our best, I'd like to see the truism of the "American look." Smart, practical, innovative, with a style all our own.

Via GlamourSplash