Claire Mccardell

But at a time when every American designer of note was sent to Paris to copy the latest styles, McCardell shrugged off the Paris couture industry, refusing, after 1940, to visit the collections or even to look at Paris design for fear it might influence her. In Claire McCardell: Redefining Modernism, coauthors Kohle Yohannan and Nancy Nolf have told a story that is as much biography as it is fashion history.