During the early period when I was designing scenery and costumes for the theater, I decided to learn how clothes were put together so that, when the occasion required, I could superintend the alteration of a badly fitted jacket or sleeve. I found that Columbia University gave an extension course in dressmaking, and I enrolled—to find myself in the company of seventy-one women. I remained untroubled by being outnumbered until it was announced that the examination problem would be for each student to cut and fit a dress for the occupant of the next seat. The day of the test I nervously entered the classroom. I quickly relaxed. Amid titters, I discovered my worktable had been provided with a headless, armless, and certainly sexless dressmaker’s dummy.
| [Henry Dreyfuss (1955): Designing for People (p. 204) | overview] |