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 ...

NPR's Andrew Limbong interviews writer Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson about her new book, "Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free." ...

LIMBONG: OK, so McCardell revolutionizes women's fashion, helps develop the American fashion industry and even begins to influence other designers. So how come McCardell isn't a household name?

NPR's Andrew Limbong interviews writer Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson about her new book, "Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free." ...

In “Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free,” Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson honors the forgotten fashion innovator.

In her exceptional biography, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson puts the American fashion icon Claire McCardell back in the pantheon.

Jason Isaacs, who most recently played the frazzled financier Timothy Ratfliff in “The White Lotus,” has opened up about his complicated feelings towards Mel Gibson.

McCardell was outspoken about this regressive return, says Dickinson, seeing it as “the canary in the coal mine for a larger societal death of women’s autonomy, this idea that they were seeing ...

McCardell also came along at a time when female designers, notably underrepresented at the helm of major fashion houses today, held significant power in the industry.