YOHANNAN, Kohle & NOLF, Nancy

[151] pp.

Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

1998

12″ x 9 1/8″

Fine/ Fine

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Stylish title featuring a colorful survey of this iconic American designer’s work

This is the first biography of fashion designer Claire McCardell (1905-1958), the pioneering creator of American sportswear. When other designers were slavishly copying Paris couture, McCardell insisted on clothes for an American useful, wearable, and affordable. Kohle Yohannan and Nancy Nolf show how McCardell’s “comfort first” ideology fostered pride and belief in American fashion. Her design inspiration drew from the pages of her own life — she loved sports and the freedom of men’s clothing — and she disdained shoulder pads, corsets, and heavy construction in favor of self wrap-and-tie styles. She preferred ordinary fabrics to more expensive ones, believing that “clothes should be useful”. In this illustrated tribute to a great American designer, McCardell is pictured wearing her own clothes, and specially commissioned photographs of McCardell garments from the archives of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology reveal her subtle craftsmanship. This publication coincides with an exhibition opening at FIT in October 1998.

Claire McCardell (May 24, 1905 March 22, 1958) was an American fashion designer of ready-to-wear clothing in the twentieth century. She is credited with the creation of American sportswear.