By Jacob Russell//
In the 21st century, people tend to view the field of fashion design as a woman’s world, but the history of the profession tells a very different tale.
The fashion design industry of today came into existence after generations of women trudged through the trials and tribulations placed upon them by an overbearingly patriarchal system.
Luxury designer brands such as Prada, Givenchy, Dior and Fenty, all have women either at the helm of their businesses or filling their executive boards. A hundred years ago, this would have been virtually impossible.
While hundreds, if not thousands of women played a part in laying the groundwork for today’s fashion design world, few come close to the contributions of Claire McCardell.
McCardell was born on May 24, 1905, in Frederick. She grew up on Rockwell Terrace and was the eldest of three siblings. She was enamored with fashion at a young age, constantly dissecting articles of her siblings’ abandoned clothing just to examine how they were made.
McCardell attended Hood College from 1924 to 1925, but never completed her degree here. During the early 1900s, it was very common for women to leave school early to marry or to stay home and take care of their families.
After Hood, McCardell went on to earn her degree in fashion design at the Parsons School of Design in New York City in 1928. She started her career in fashion design as an assistant designer for Robert Turk, who brought McCardell with him when he moved to the fashion line Townley Frocks. Turk died in 1932, which gave McCardell her first opportunity to oversee a fashion line. It is hard to emphasize just how exceedingly rare this opportunity was, but McCardell took advantage of her chance.
Taking head of Townley’s fall line, McCardell invented sashes and spaghetti string ties, and was one of the first fashion designers to incorporate menswear details in womenswear. She coined the Monastic Dress, which hung loosely and freely drooped with a seamed waist and came with a belt that adapted to any figure.
Perhaps McCardell’s most noteworthy contributions to fashion design came in American sportswear and in establishing the practice of attributing a designer’s name to their work. American sportswear in the 1930s was ready-to-wear clothing, fit for the modern woman. These designs were developed to cater to fast-paced lifestyles. They were made from denim or cotton, easy to put on, and helped establish a more eased American dress code. In fact, McCardell is the reason women’s dresses and pants have pockets.
Claire McCardell Clothes by Townley was the name of McCardell’s line. She was one of the very first designers to have their name attached to their clothing. Even more importantly, she was one of the first women to have their name attached to any creation of their own. She set the standard that women are so much more than housekeepers, laborers or child-bearers.
This was a time where many men genuinely believed in their intellectual and creative superiority to women, where society-at-large felt that men were better suited for any tasks requiring intuitive thought. McCardell certainly did not end misogyny or dismantle the patriarchy, that is a road that we are still on to this day. However, she played an integral role in progressing women’s roles in society and did so as an honorary Hood alumna.
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