During Women’s History Month, join us to learn the hidden history of the designer Claire McCardell, who forever changed fashion—and the lives of women.

Claire McCardell (1905-1958) shattered cultural norms around women’s clothes, and today much of what we wear traces back to her ingenious, rebellious mind. After World War II, she fought the severe, hyper-feminized silhouette championed by male designers. Her goal was to set women free. McCardell tossed out corsets in favor of a comfortably elegant look. She insisted on pockets and made zippers easy to reach; she invented ballet flats and mix-and-match separates, and introduced wrap dresses, hoodies, leggings, and denim. Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson celebrated new biography—named one of The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2025—is filled with personal drama and industry secrets. Claire McCardell reveals how the designer built an empire at a time when women rarely made the upper echelons of business. At its core, hers is a story about our right to choose how we dress—and our right to choose how we live.

“This is more than just the biography of a fashion revolutionary: It is a story of the fight for women’s identity and, incidentally, the birth of an American industry.” —The New York Times

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson is an award-winning journalist and author whose writing has been widely published in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, The Southern Review, and The Washington Post Magazine, among many others. A National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, Dickinson’s work has earned recognition in anthologies such as The Best American Essays and been awarded Maryland’s prestigious Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize for literature. Dickinson lives in Baltimore with her husband and daughter.

Petra Slinkard is the James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes Chief Curator and Nancy B. Putnam Curator of Fashion and Textiles at PEM. She oversees the museum’s Fashion and Design collection and steward’s PEM’s award-winning curatorial program. Slinkard directs the museum’s Fashion and Design gallery and served as curator or co-curator for Made It: The Women who Revolutionized Fashion. PEM houses a number of McCardell’s works in the collection, one of which was featured in this 2020 exhibition on women fashion designers. On view currently at PEM is Andrew Gn: Fashioning the World.

Presented in partnership with Boston Public Library