Elizabeth Hawes - '21

Elizabeth Hawes graduated Ridgewood High School as a member of the Class of 1921. She was an American clothing designer, outspoken critic of the fashion industry, author, union organizer, and political activist. Hawes graduated from Vassar College in 1925 and moved to Paris to begin her career in fashion. Hawes began working at a dressmaker shop and in 1926 became a sketcher for a New York manufacturer of mass-produced clothing. She then became a full-time fashion correspondent for the Cosmos Newspaper Syndicate, contributing to a regular article that appeared in the New York Post and other large newspapers. This led to a regular column for the New Yorker under the nom de plume"Parisite", which ran for three years. She worked as a fashion buyer for Macy's and as a stylist in Lord and Taylor's Paris offices. Moving back to New York in 1928, Hawes opened a design house under her own name, and in 1932 had the distinction of being the first American designer, of either gender, to hold a fashion show in Paris. Hawes is one of a very select few who are credited with the invention of what we know today as American Sportswear. She believed the modern American woman did not need to be restricted to the confines of the dictates of Parisian fashion, and espoused the notion that clothing should be comfortable, and championed the idea of individual style over fashion. In the 1940's Hawes slowly began to move away from her design business, and move toward a more involved role in labor unions as both a union organizer and columnist for the Detroit Free Press. She became a very vocal proponent for worker's rights and fair employment practices, particularly the fact that women were being unfairly underpaid for doing the same jobs as their male counterparts. Because of her beliefs, Hawes was blacklisted for her allegedly Communist work, and was never able to regain the stature and success she had achieved during the 1920s and 1930s. Elizabeth Hawes is the author of nine books. Inducted 2016.