From the end of the 1930s through the 1940s, the New York fashion industry came into its own. Sportswear, which had evolved from its sporting origins to include simple casual wear for town and country, travel and leisure, was at the centre of this shift. Sportswear provided busy career women, college girls and housewives with clothes that could be worn on all occasions.Drawing on a wonderful array of sources, from fashion magazines to department store records, this book is the rich and absorbing narrative and analysis of how New York sportswear evolved to become the definitive American style and how a modern fashion aesthetic was born. The story that unfolds reveals, with the aid of some wonderful illustrations, how New York's emergent style became dynamic and modern, like the city itself, expressive of the American ideal of athletic, long-limbed women; and how it tapped into both metropolitan Americanness and the America of wide-open spaces.It explores the designers, such as Claire McCardell, Clare Potter and Tina Leser, themselves embodiments of the modern, active woman, and how they gave middle class American women New York sportswear as an alternative to Parisian-inspired designs.It looks for the first time at how its style connected not just to ideals of patriotism and democracy, but to current notions of cleanliness and hygiene, and for example, to 1930s theories of body image, and contemporary dance.

From the end of the 1930s through the 1940s, the New York fashion industry came into its own. Sportswear, which had evolved from its sporting origins, was at the centre of this shift. This book presents a narrative and analysis of how New York sportswear evolved to become the definitive American style and how a modern fashion aesthetic was born.

Contents 3List of Illustrations 4Acknowledgements 16Introduction 17Chapter One: New York and the Evolution of SportswearNew York City 61Sportswear 84Modern Sportswear Aesthetic I 102Chapter Two: American Body CultureBody Image/Body Culture 119Health and Hygiene 132Exercise and Dance 147Sports Body 164Chapter Three: Sportswear and the New York Fashion IndustryDuring the DepressionEffects of the Depression 189Career Women 207Fashion Group 226Chapter Four: Sportswear's Promotion During the 1930sNew York Department Stores 240Fashion Media 259The Monastic Dress and the Sportswear Promotion in the late 1930s 279Chapter Five: Sportswear and the New York Fashion IndustryDuring the Second World WarEffects of the Second World War 298Sportswear Design and Representation 222Modern Sportswear Aesthetic II 237Chapter Six: The American Look and the Rise of the DesignerThe American Look 372New York Sportswear Designers and Consumerism 394The Woman of Fashion 1947 414Conclusion 431Bibliography 456Index