American Look (fashion movement)

The American Look was a fashion movement in the late 1940s founded by American designer Claire McCardell (1905–1958). The American Look was simple, flattering and inexpensive. Characteristic easy-to-wear, comfortable fabrics of the American Look include denim, cotton and knit jersey. Designs allowed for freedom of movement as well as practicality. Characteristic designs include the Popover dress, which could be easily pulled on for everything from entertaining and parties to covering up a swimsuit,[1] the use of ballet slippers as everyday footwear, pockets and pleats in skirts and trousers, and a move away from constrictive undergarments like corsets. The American Look differed from the New Look in de-emphasizing accessories like handbags and gloves.[2]

Patriotism

The American Look was precipitated by mass production of ready-to-wear fashion, and the mass-produced inexpensive clothing were seen as antithetical to bespoke European (primarily French) clothing, and part of the patriotic confidence of American production. Clair McCardell once said, "I belong to a mass production country where any of us, all of us, deserve the right to good fashion."[3] The designs of the American Look were also seen as democratic, moving away from the constricted silhouettes associated with traditional (pre- New Look) French fashion towards designs that fit a variety of shapes.[4]

Emily S. Rosenberg has argued that the American Look, while still associated with white standards of beautiful, was a de-racialized national standard, based in the economic prosperity of mid-century America as demonstrated through healthy teeth and cheap, fashionable clothing, rather than on racial or ethnic characteristics. Emily S. Rosenberg points to a six-page spread in Life magazine on May 21, 1945 that declared explicitly “[GIs] have seen and evaluated the relative endowments of English girls, French girls, Australian girls, and Polynesian girls. They have some to be beautiful, some pretty, some exotic. But none of them look like the American girls and the GI has come to appreciate and miss, with a deep and genuine poignance [sic], the look that sets American girls apart from those of all other lands.”[5]

References

  1. ↑ Claire McCardell: "Popover" dress (C.I.45.71.2ab) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History" The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web. 14 Nov 2009.
  2. ↑ "American Look" http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/fashion_costume_culture/Modern-World-1946-1960/American-Look.html
  3. ↑ Batterberry, Michael, and Ariane Batterberry. Fashion: The Mirror of History. New York: Greenwich House, 1977
  4. ↑ "American Look" http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/fashion_costume_culture/Modern-World-1946-1960/American-Look.html
  5. ↑ Emily S Rosenberg and Shanon Fitzpatrick Eds. Body and Nation: the Global Realm of US Body Politics in the Twentieth Century. Duke University Press, 2014
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