Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson has established herself as one of this city’s best writers. Crossing genres from narrative nonfiction to cultural criticism, short fiction, and memoir with signature intelligence and grace, her work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post Magazine, The Southern Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Baltimore magazine, among other publications.

In 2018, Dickinson was a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and in 2023, she became
the first literary artist in Maryland to win the Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize from the Baker Artist Awards.

In Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free, Dickinson puts her well-honed research skills and elegant prose into service to bring the extraordinary, if somewhat forgotten, Frederick-born designer to life.

This is more than a book about fashion, however. Through McCardell’s rise in the male-dominated New York fashion industry, Dickinson explores the evolving role of women in the workplace—the changes and challenges of the midcentury period—and her groundbreaking designs, which would ultimately become known as “the American Look.”

My grandmothers were Claire McCardell’s age. They worked so-called “pink-collar” jobs—bank secretary and cafeteria manager. They were creative, outdoorsy, and raised families, too. I felt like McCardell was designing for women like them.
When we hear the term “sportswear” today, we have on our modern filter, which translates to “athleisure”—like yoga pants. But the experience of your grandmothers describes the need for clothes that you could move in, clothes that you could work in. “Sportswear” became this catch-all term for essentially what became American fashion, like what Claire invented. There were these very practical considerations that became so interesting to me because they were as much about women’s autonomy as they were about women’s fashion.

How do you describe her design breakthrough?
One, she democratized design. She brought a form-meets-function thoughtfulness to design for women who didn’t have access to it. Previously, only women who were wealthy could afford really well-made clothes, primarily French haute couture. What Claire also saw was a need for a different kind of design that forefronted a woman’s true body. So, there wasn’t all this boning and corsets and structure. And she wanted to put it in American department stores and make it affordable and make it basically “ready to wear.” That didn’t exist.

Right. There is that Calvin Klein quote toward the end of the book, “She really invented sportswear, which is this country’s major contribution to fashion.”
The one place where Claire McCardell has never been forgotten is in the fashion-design field. Much of what we wear today came from her brilliant brain. The mix-and-match separate. She didn’t invent the idea of a wrap dress, but she pioneered the modern version of the wrap dress. She gave us ballet flats. Her inventions remain integral to our lives, even if her name is no longer associated with them.

One thing I love that you highlight is how her work takes place alongside the Modernist movement.
I see her very much in conversation with other Modernists. Painters like Georgia O’Keefe, architects like Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright. Industrial design is being invented. The Abstract Expressionism movement will take root later in female artists like Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Lee Krasner, the “Ninth Street” women. This was a magical moment in New York.

It’s funny, being a women’s fashion designer, how much she was influenced by growing up in rural Frederick and tree climbing, swimming, and skiing with her older brothers.
Claire McCardell was a rare designer who thought about the woman’s experience. She wasn’t worried about the male gaze or the societal gaze. Dior, who I write about, was very much about objectifying women, how they looked to the outside world, how they looked to men. She was concerned about a woman’s own experience and how she felt wearing the clothes, and what she did in those clothes.

Having three brothers absolutely informed her thinking. Not only about the design of clothes, but also the gendered nature of that design. She questioned why her brothers had pants with pockets, and she was trying to climb a tree in a dress and stockings.

Art Space is a recurring element in the UpFront section of our print publication that spotlights a local artist or project making an impact in the city at large. Here’s what’s going on this month:

There’s something to be said about simple, practical elegance. And in many ways, we have Claire McCardell—the trailblazing, Frederick-born, midcentury womenswear fashion designer—to thank for that.

McCardell’s ready-to-wear clothing—which included the first “spaghetti straps,” dress pockets, and ballet flats—allowed women to feel sophisticated without sacrificing comfort. Starting on November 5, more than 60 years after her death at the age of 52, a new “Claire/McCardell” exhibition at The Maryland Center for History and Culture will feature her iconic designs, along with letters, interviews, and documents that take an intimate look at her too-short life.

In the heart of Mt. Vernon, there is a small, cool, dark room that holds the history of Maryland fashion. It is, essentially, a large closet, with metal shelves stacked with boxes of all shapes and sizes, and multiple rolling racks hung with muslin-wrapped uniforms and ball gowns.

“This is Tench Tilghman,” says Allison Tolman, touching the arm of a mannequin dressed as a Revolutionary War officer. “He’s going to the State House next week.”

Through the Maryland Center for History and Culture’s lobby, past its exhibition galleries, around a construction zone, beneath an exposed wood ceiling, sits the institution’s bona fide treasure trove—the Fashion Archives.

This impressive collection includes more than 15,000 items, from women’s, men’s, and children’s clothing to accessories like shoes, hats, and underwear spanning four centuries. The oldest item is a 1724 wedding apron, but there are also 19th-century horseback riding garments, embellished Roaring ’20s dresses, and designs once sold at the Hutzler’s department store.

There are pieces worn by iconic local figures, like Duchess of Windsor Wallis Simpson, politician Helen Delich Bentley, and mid-century American fashion trailblazer Claire McCardell, plus those made by rising designers Christian Siriano and Bishme Cromartie.

“Every day we get up and pick out what we wear and that says something about us and helps us learn about each other in interesting ways,” says Tolman, the MCHC’s vice present of collections and interpretations. “Clothing is such a powerful tool. It humanizes history.”

 

“Clothing is such a powerful tool. It humanizes history.”

 

 

The MCHC was founded as the Maryland Historical Society in 1844, but it wasn’t until 1919 that clothing would join the collection in earnest, with the purchase of the historic Enoch Pratt House, where the apparel was put on display.

But in the 1970s, the society shifted its focus toward other parts of its collection, and every shirt, hat, and ribbon was transitioned into long-term storage. All but forgotten, these pieces would not resurface until 2011, and under the tutelage of then-chief curator Alexandra Deutsch, the Fashion Archives were reborn.

“Alexandra started putting costumes into every exhibition, because it’s easier to see history with a person in front of you,” says Tolman, who co-curated 2019’s Spectrum of Fashion with Deutsch. “Seeing a woman’s mourning dress from the Civil War changes how you think about it. It’s not just the facts you were taught in school. People were here. They lived in this moment. And through them you can learn a lot about what happened.”

But for historic fashion to be exhibited in the first place is no easy feat, and it has taken several years to rehouse five floor-to-ceiling rooms’ worth of attire. Each item is cleaned, wrapped or padded with acid-free tissue or Tyvek, then transferred into archival blue-board boxes or hung on specialty hangers and wrapped in unbleached cotton, with the curators meticulously minimizing folds, which weaken fabric. All are researched and recorded in a digital database before moving into storage, which is climate-controlled for temperature and humidity to prevent mildew and dry rot, and later displayed for no more than one year at a time to reduce light damage, ensuring their survival for future generations.

With state funding, the MCHC is now transforming a former gallery into a new state-of-the-art facility devoted to storing textiles, which will hopefully be finished by their fall exhibit, showcasing one of the largest collections of clothing by McCardell, which caught the attention of New York fashion designer Tory Burch. Her current line is inspired by the Frederick-born designer, and her foundation has funded a new fellowship under Tolman, pictured right above with fellow Robyn Levy.

It’s hard for the curator to pick one favorite piece from the archives, but a red wool McCardell dress, currently donning a mannequin next to the tricorned Tench, is up there.

“Claire was a designer who wore her pieces for years,” says Tolman, pointing to hand-stitched mends. “She said some clothes earn the right to survive. I love that.”

“You know why women love Claire McCardell?” says sculptor Sarah Hempel Irani. “Because she gave us pockets. And then she gave us flats.”

The only girl of Eleanor and Adrian McCardell’s four children, Claire McCardell was born into a well-to-do family in Frederick in 1905. She climbed trees, rode horses, skied, and acquired the nickname “Kick” for her skill in keeping roughhousing boys at bay. She also made outfits for her paper dolls from her mother’s magazine photos, kept an interested eye on local seamstress Annie Koogle when she sewed clothes for the family, and liked to tear apart her brothers’ less-restrictive clothes to see how they were pieced together.

The visionary behind ready-to-wear fashion for women on the move, she’d later create sporty cycling ensembles for women and incorporate menswear details in her signature designs.

“She wouldn’t have called herself a revolutionary,” Hempel Irani continues, “but what she did was revolutionary.”

McCardell tossed aside girdles, darts, shoulder pads, and unwieldy zippers that ran along the back of garments, as well as Paris fashion trends, and developed the distinctive, mid-century style known as The American Look that embodied both elegant simplicity and practical purpose.

“I like buttons that button and bows that tie,” she once said. More recently, McCardell’s designs served as the go-to fashion inspiration for the Emmy-winning Amazon Prime hit The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

As always, necessity was the mother of her inventions. When leather and rubber were in short supply during World War II, she turned to shoe manufacturer Capezio to help repurpose ballet slippers into functional footwear that fit her designs. To lighten her luggage on her European travels, McCardell created separates by designing dresses with interchangeable blouses and skirts.

Over a groundbreaking career as a designer and businesswoman, she became one of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century, according to Life magazine, influencing designers from Diane von Furstenberg to Michael Kors and Donna Karan.

“She modernized the way women dress,” designer Anna Sui told The Washington Post. “Her clothes are timeless.”

Two years ago, the all-women’s Frederick Art Club, founded in 1897, decided the time was long overdue to honor McCardell, whose clothes are part of the collections at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, and the Maryland Center for History and Culture.

Initial plans called for a relatively modest bas-relief sculpture. But as they delved into their subject, they realized they wanted to make a larger statement that would reflect the enormous impact of her democratizing designs for the women of her era, who were seeking freedom and new roles in the workplace and society.

“Newswomen, in particular, were crazy about her,” says Linda Moran, chair of the Art Club’s Claire McCardell Project. “They gave her two Coty Awards.”

Eventually, they commissioned Hempel Irani, an award-winning sculptor who had recently moved back to Frederick, to create a 7-foot-6-inch bronze sculpture to pay homage to the designer in her hometown. (McCardell, whose life and career were cut short by cancer in 1958, is buried in the family plot at Frederick’s Mount Olivet Cemetery.) The bronze statue, with accompanying signage that will share her story, is scheduled for a fall unveiling at the city’s Carroll Creek Linear Park, Fredrick’s popular downtown greenway.

With the endeavor, the Art Club joins a national “break the bronze ceiling” movement to lift more monumental women on pedestals. Currently, less than 7 percent of the more than 5,100 monuments in the U.S. honor women.

As a teenager, Claire McCardell had hoped to study in New York. But, in a sign of the times, her father initially persuaded her to enroll at nearby Hood College in the home economics program. After two years, the somewhat shy, yet unwavering, McCardell moved to the Big Apple and enrolled at the Parsons School of Design.

Single and working for a designer in Manhattan, her big break came at 33 when a buyer for a major retailer noticed the dress McCardell was wearing. It was not a part of the company’s line he’d been shown, but something she had designed. What became known as “the Monastic Dress” hung loosely, but with a versatile belt that could be gracefully tied to follow a woman’s curves. The initial order sold out in a day.

“I’ve always designed things I needed myself,” McCardell later said. “It just turns out that other people need them, too.”