Deborah Trefts
Staff Writer
If every child who wanted to become a marine biologist actually did so, the global oceans might be healthier, but many other fields would be left wanting.
Take Chautauquan Anna Denton, for instance, who — in addition to oceans — was also into fashion aesthetics. From a very young age, she drew pictures of clothes. Eventually she became a designer and instigator within the competitive world of women’s fashion.
At 9:15 a.m. Tuesday at the CWC House, Denton will give a myth-busting presentation titled “History of Women’s Fashion” for the Women’s Club’s Chautauqua Speaks program.
“I studied art history, feminist theory and sociology in college at Haverford,” she said. “Fashion is at the intersection of each. … This art from both reflects and drives economic, political and social change.”
Even before college, Denton “had an incredible sociology professor at summer camp in Princeton, [New Jersey] in high school.” For her, “it was like breathing air for the first time,” which she said was “a huge eye-opener.”
Rest assured, she also attended Chautauqua Boys’ and Girls’ Club. “I’ve been coming here my whole life,” Denton said. “My grandmother sat next to a stranger at Wimbledon who mentioned Chautauqua.”
After Haverford, she moved to New York City to work in Manhattan’s fashion industry for a decade. It was during this period that the first “Devil Wears Prada” movie came out.
“Then, everyone had to sign NDAs (nondisclosure agreements),” Denton said.
When it was time to pivot, she earned her master’s business administration at Columbia University, which she said “was like a baseline education in how to have business acumen and question things.”
She continued: “Deloitte was like finishing school. I was a [telecommunications and technology] consultant on planes, working 18-hour days. That’s when I noticed that men were so comfortable sitting next to me during my 18-hour day, looking cool as a cucumber.”
Denton realized that if there was a gap in her shirt while she was giving a presentation, all eyes focused on it rather than the important points she was trying to make, causing a “cognitive load.” Thinking she “had to look like a man to be a successful woman” created an “additional load of worry.”
Her solution was to return to the fashion industry as a designer specializing in “better suiting that captures the power of women.” By this she meant, “custom and bespoke” clothing. She also founded her own company, ANNA DAY.
Last September, a “Legacy Makers” television episode spotlighted Denton and her personal and professional journey as an entrepreneur and change-maker. In it, she explored “the deeper role clothing plays in how women lead, move and express themselves in
the workplace.”
She challenged traditional expectations, showing “how design — when done with women in mind — can remove barriers and unlock greater confidence.”
“We shape the garments to fit the man so they look better,” Denton said in Chautauqua. “Women have been suited by fitting themselves to the garment. It’s a personal failing if it doesn’t fit.”
How that norm came about will be revealed in her talk on Tuesday, which is “the culmination of her research into the history of women’s clothing and how historical inequities have throughlines evidenced in today’s womenswear.”
She said she’ll start with the Crusades, and she’ll include “pivotal shifts in the early 1900s.”
“I’ll be confronting some of the largest myths in women’s fashion,” Denton said. “I’ll talk about (French fashion designers Madeleine) Vionnet and (Coco) Chanel as innovators, and the relationship that fashion has created between women and their own bodies. And, I’ll talk about the politics of pockets.”
