Elizabeth Hawes

Elizabeth Hawes opened her couture salon in New York City in 1928. Working through the 1930s she not only created elegant clothing but wrote several books including her best seller Fashion is Spinach in 1938. She was a marketing trailblazer, a union activist during WWII, and anticipated fashion trends that would not become a reality until the 1960s and beyond.

This new publication, and accompanying exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum, highlights Hawes’s work, her influences, and her role in promoting a new generation of female designers like Claire McCardell, Bonnie Cashin, and Vera Maxwell. The authors look variously at Hawes’ importance and influence on future female designers, her life, the women she dressed, her menswear and ready-to-wear lines, her work in the context of other American designers, her choice of colours, fabrics and construction techniques, and her politics, illustrated throughout with colour plates of pieces, ensembles and accoutrements, plus additional archival materials, including working sketches, information on her politics and prolific writing output.

The Cincinnati Art Museum’s fashion collection includes over thirty examples of her work, most of which were worn by one of her most devoted clients, Cincinnati socialite Dorette Kruse Fleischmann.

Edited by Cynthia Amnéus

Contributions by Cynthia Amnéus, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, Katherine Hill McIntyre, Patricia Mears, Rebecca Sadtler Huckstep, and Dr. Jennie Woodard

Author biographies

Cynthia Amnéus is curator of Fashion Arts and Textiles for the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson is an award- winning writer whose work encompasses cultural criticism, narrative nonfiction, investigative journalism, short fiction, and memoir.

Katherine Hill McIntyre is assistant conservator at Caring for Textiles with over 25 years of experience in major museums, historic houses, archives, and private clothing collections.

Patricia Mears is deputy director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York.Rebecca Sadtler Huckstep is a masters graduate of Bard Graduate Center.

Dr Jennie Woodard is an assistant professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maine.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction by Patricia Mears
• Biography of Elizabeth Hawes by Cynthia Amnéus
• Ambassadress of Style by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson
• Designing “The Man of Tomorrow” by Rebecca Sadtler Huckstep
• Adventures in Ready-to-Wear by Katherine Hill McIntyre
• Fit, Construction, Color by Cynthia Amnéus
• Leaving the “Ivory Tower” Behind by Jennie Woodard
• Plates
• Conclusion
• Bibliography