Mary McFadden draws her inspiration almost entirely from the artistry of ancient civilizations. She is one of the most exotic, unconventional designers in the United States today. A design archaeologist at heart, McFadden celebrates Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and ancient Greek cultures and incorporates their ideas and expressions into her couture designs. McFadden's luxurious, uninhibited creations showcase gleaming royal colors, rich fabrics, and detailed embroidery. The art of ancient civilizations is literally woven into her fabrics. McFadden's designs convey her deep interest in distant cultures and times. In contrast to many of her colleagues, who plunder other periods for their forms with only a cursory understanding of their meanings, McFadden reflects in her designs an archeologist's fascination with the cultures and narratives expressed through art. Harold Koda, curator of Goddess: The Classical Mode, Metropolitan Museum of Art My goal has been to give an art form to dressing by virtue of creating some of the most beautiful hand-painted fabrics and developing new areas in pleating and quilting that have not been done before on Seventh Avenue. --Mary McFadden This first complete portrait of the artist behind the legendary dresses is published to coincide with the first museum retrospective of designs by this American fashion icon. Mary McFadden is a fashion designer based in New York. She launched her first collection there in 1973 and won a Coty Award in 1976, entering the Coty Hall of Fame in 1979. Since then she has received many honors and has served as President of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. McFadden's collections have been shown on runways in New York, Paris, Rome, Milan, and Tokyo. Ruta Saliklis, is the Kate Fowler Merle-Smith Curator of Textiles at the Allentown Art Museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Ruta Saliklis acquired her M.F.A. in Museum Studies from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in Textile History from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Prior to her present postition, Saliklis was curator of the Northampton County Museum in Easton, Pennsylvania, and she was a visiting scholar at the museums of the Historic Bethlehem Partnership. She is a part-time visiting professor at Lafayette College in Easton, where she has taught courses on dress, gender, and American material culture. Her research has led her to work at the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection and to Middleton, Wisconsin-based Pleasant Company, maker of the American Girl dolls.