Some readers may be quite familiar with this lady, but a recent article in The Atlantic was my introduction to her.
Claire McCardell hated being uncomfortable. This was true long before she became one of America’s most famous fashion designers in the 1950s, her influence felt in every woman’s wardrobe, her face on the cover of Time magazine.As a young girl growing up in Maryland, she hated wearing a dress when climbing trees, and didn’t understand why she couldn’t wear pants with pockets like her brothers—she had nowhere to put the apples she picked. At summer camp, she loathed swimming in the cumbersome full-length stockings women were expected to wear, so she ditched hers and went bare-legged in the lake, even though she knew she’d get in trouble. When she was just starting out as a fashion designer, in the 1930s, she went on a ski trip to New Hampshire and one evening saw a woman shivering in a thin satin dress. Why, McCardell wondered, couldn’t an evening gown be made out of something warmer, so a woman could actually enjoy herself?McCardell made a career out of asking such questions, and helped transform American fashion in the process, as Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson details in her lively and psychologically astute biography, Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free. The young designer who came home from New Hampshire and devised a blue wool evening dress was often dismissed by her bosses for her “crazy” ideas—wool was for coats, not parties! She was told to keep copying the latest looks from Paris, as was customary in the American garment trade at the time. In those early years, McCardell didn’t have the clout to design apparel her way. But she had a core conviction, and she never abandoned it: Women deserve to be comfortable—in their clothes, and in the world...McCardell insisted on putting pockets in women’s clothing; previously, pockets were reserved almost exclusively for men... She put fasteners on the side of her clothes rather than the back, so women could get dressed without a husband or a maid. She partnered with Capezio to popularize the ballet flat—and the idea that women didn’t always have to wear heels. When air travel became possible, and steamer trunks were replaced with slim suitcases, McCardell developed separates: tops and bottoms you could mix and match so that you didn’t have to bring a bulky parade of dresses for every occasion. She patented the wrap dress, mainstreamed the leotard, stripped linings out of swimsuits so that women didn’t have to sit sodden and cold on the beach. Ever worn denim? McCardell is the one who ignored its provenance as a humble workingman’s textile and brought it to women’s wear.
More at the link. I don't plan to read the book and won't be reviewing it here, but I'm introducing her and the book because I'm sure this is the type of fashion designer my pragmatic mother would have loved.
Was she really the first to add pockets to dresses?
ReplyDeletep.s. great photo of her, standing half behind the glass!
btw, Claire McCardell wrote a book of her own: "What Shall I Wear?: The What, Where, When, and How Much of Fashion" (1956, with anew edition in 2022)
ReplyDeleteWomen are still fighting for functional pockets to this very day. You know, a pocket that will hold something larger than a tissue.
ReplyDeleteInteresting assertion. Fighting? Where I live, in California, women buy anything they want and dress any way they want. (My wife has many pairs of jeans, for example. Many pockets. On the other hand, she just wore a beautiful dress to a wedding--no pockets. There's no "fighting for" involved in any of this.) Are you in the USA or Saudi Arabia? (Here, once again, I'm responding to what appears to me to be contrived victimization, which does have a real cost.)
DeleteSorry to belabor the issue, but I did some field work this morning.
DeleteMy wife was on her way to work, looking good as usual. She was wearing a jungle print top and a pair of denim pants. The denim pants were fairly tight fitting, with four deep, "functional pockets." I asked her about what she would be carrying to work. Nothing in the pockets. Keys, chap stick, a wallet and an iPhone, all in a crossbody bag. Why don't you put all that stuff in your pockets?, sez I. Her answer was that she just doesn't want a bunch of stuff in her pockets. Doesn't like the feel.
It's interesting that having pockets but not using them seems to be where a lot of women have now landed. In light of this, how can anyone say women are still "fighting for" pockets (or make all sorts of other clothing-oppression related claims, were we to examine them inch by inch)? Women not only can have pockets, they can have purely decorative pockets in any quantity they desire.
But here's the most interesting part: it appears that grievances need no basis in reality. And, when a grievance is perceived as having some utility, it's plum impolite to question it.
Meanwhile, there is real suffering in this old world.
Sadly, women's clothing still is very impractical with too few pockets and the pockets that do exist are way smaller than in men's clothing. Just compare the pockets in jeans.
ReplyDeleteNope. My wife has many pairs of jeans with "man-size" pockets. She was not required to get a special permit to buy/own these items. When women wear apparel with small pockets or no pockets it's for aesthetic effect. Not because they're feeble or forced to do so, gun to head.
Deletejeans with "man-size" pockets
DeleteQED.
Hence the quotation marks...or what I was trying to communicate with the quotation marks.
DeleteMen had man-sized pockets, historically, because they worked outside more and needed to carry stuff, while women worked inside more and had stuff at hand. Or so it seems obvious to me. (It's still the case that men do most of the outside work... Anyway, between my belt and pockets, I still carry a loaded wallet, keys, coins, a pen, dog poop bags, a paper towel, a handkerchief, a Leatherman, a small flashlight and a Vosteed folding knife--no iPhone, but a wrist watch. On any given walk, my wife has poop bags and dog toys...and not much else. My wife is a successful professional and would laugh if you said she was oppressed. I think she appreciates my "Boy Scout level" of preparedness--or takes it for granted, given I'm the man. I do see this as a man thing and will continue to do so until I see women actually needing all those pockets of which we speak.)
Here's a question for you: If not having pockets and carrying a purse/handbag is so very oppressive, why do women sometimes spend over a million dollars on a bag?
At what point do we begin to look at consumerism as evil, in all its particulars? What's the cost to planet Earth in the last 100 years of hyping clothing as having some sort of value beyond its obvious utility under the umbrella of "food, clothing and shelter?" (A very high cost.) How do we go on saying we care about the planet, while at the same time celebrating and romanticizing consumerism? I'll venture a guess that 90% of the damage done, in the current approach to clothing ourselves, is entirely unnecessary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_fashion#:~:text=laundering%20synthetic%20textiles.-,Cotton,the%20associated%20pollution%20affects%20biodiversity.
ReplyDeleteAfter making a few comments on this post, I reread the post and read the Wikipedia article on McCardell. Because there's a justice thread in the narrative (look how this one class of people--women--have suffered due to their clothing) I think we ought to be as clear as possible about whether an injustice has occurred and to what extent. This is important given that how we approach suffering and justice is perhaps the most important subject in any time or place.
ReplyDeleteIt appears to me that McCardell's orientation, as is true in the whole fashion industry, was toward satisfying the needs and wants of the upper class. No one else can afford the kind of clothing McCardell was designing and producing: the example of the silk skirt on the ski trip should suffice as an illustration of what drew McCardell's attention.
In a word, whether rich women had enough pockets is very far removed from the question of how much human suffering has resulted from just plain deprivation in the realm of clothing. In other words, while McCardell was focused on making the rich ever more comfortable--and beautiful--millions of Americans, men, women, children (just to mention our country) were under-dressed, dressed in rags, shivering in the cold... In light of this, the underlying thesis of women's suffering due to lack of pockets--notably the most affluent class--strikes me as threadbare.
The bottom line is that as technology changes, humans adapt, to include sex roles. It seems obvious to me that clothing follows--with functionality an unavoidable consideration. McCardell was simply in a time and place when women's clothing changed in the wake of changes in women's roles in society. I don't see the heroism. I see creativity and the business sense to respond to the demands of those who can afford high fashion, the rich.
PS: I asked my wife about pockets in jeans. She said there are jeans with pockets and jeans without pockets. For the tightest fit, it's jeans without pockets. When women/girls wear these jeans, "It's because they want to get laid." Translation: it's about sexual power and selection, not lack of choices.
Possibly relevant, but I don't have time to read thoroughly or ponder deeply, so this will go into the next linkfest -
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/oct/05/was-prehistory-a-feminist-paradise