Mary mcfadden collection short sleeve black dress

Less could have been expected from a well-bred society girl like Mary McFadden, who stepped out of the safe confines of the haut monde to create iconic designs for evening dresses, jackets, skirts and other items inspired by ancient and ethnic cultures and traditions.

Fashion, in fact, was not initially on her agenda.

“I fell into it backwards,” she told the New York Times in 1979.

Born in New York but raised on a cotton plantation in Memphis, Tennessee, McFadden spent a few months at the Traphagen School of Fashion in 1956 and moved on to study sociology and anthropology at Columbia University.

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Afterward, she spent a short period of time in public relations at Christian Dior during the early 1960s, but she was unsure exactly what would lie ahead for her. McFadden decided to relocate to South Africa with her first husband, who oversaw production of the De Beers mines.

While there, she began to design h