The Mary McFadden Experience

Woodmere is proud to offer the following database of the works & history of
Mary McFadden, artist and fashion designer. Scroll down to explore her wearable art, including Gowns, Jewelry, Outerwear, Sets, and more. Find a searchable database of the designer’s collections, and explore the Lending Library. A chronology of Mary McFadden’s life and a bibliography are provided for further research.

About Mary McFadden

Mary McFadden was an American fashion designer renowned for her historically inspired pleated gowns and patented Marii fabric. Founder of Mary McFadden Inc. (1976–2002), the company was noted for the McFadden-designed pleated dresses, which draped "like liquid gold" down a woman's body similar to those on the caryatids at the Acropolis and the first female president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, she drew on global art and travel for her designs, earning accolades like the CFDA Lifetime Achievement Award. Her work is in museum collections, and she authored Mary McFadden: A Lifetime of Design, Collecting, and Adventure. McFadden also licensed her name to many products such as eyewear, footwear, home furnishings, and more.

Read “My Story” by Mary McFadden

Chronology

Member Lending Library

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video

The Violet Oakley Experience is funded by a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.
For her expertise and scholarship on The Violet Oakley Experience, Woodmere thanks Patricia Likos Ricci. The foremost authority on Oakley, she is the Director of the Department of Fine Arts, Associate Professor of the History of Art, and a member of the Women and Gender Studies faculty at Elizabethtown College.
Woodmere’s website infrastructure and the digitization of the Museum’s collection are made possible by the generous support of Lisa Kabnick and John McFadden.