{"id":20852,"date":"2024-09-18T19:09:52","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T23:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/?p=20852"},"modified":"2024-09-18T19:09:53","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T23:09:53","slug":"the-damsels-of-design-the-women-who-changed-automotive-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/2024\/09\/18\/the-damsels-of-design-the-women-who-changed-automotive-history\/","title":{"rendered":"The Damsels of Design: The Women Who Changed Automotive History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For all of the horror that emerged from the Second World War, there were some bright spots: With the men out fighting, women were brought into the workplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mid 1950s, one visionary executive believed women could have a lasting impact on the automobile industry. Harley J. Earl, then the vice president of design at General Motors, introduced \u201cThe Damsels of Design,\u201d a group of industrial designers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[Earl] really recognized before his contemporaries that women in post-war era really had a lot more buying power, and they were making a lot more decisions about the home, and kind of the car as an extension of the home\u201d says Rebecca Veit, the Designing Women columnist<\/a> at the magazine Core77.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veit says that Earl believed that this 10 member design team could give GM \u201cthe feminine touch\u201d \u2014 a softer aesthetic sensibility that American car consumers could appreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGM\u2019s PR department really saw a great opportunity to promote the women they were bringing in, and dubbed them \u2018The Damsels of Design,\u2019\u201d says Veit. \u201cFrom everything I\u2019ve read, they really kind of hated the name and being called \u2018The Damsels\u2019 \u2014 they really felt that it didn\u2019t give them a fair shake as designers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four of \u201cThe Damsels\u201d worked as industrial designers for GM-owned Frigidaire, where they helped create the Kitchen of Tomorrow<\/a>, while the remaining six were tapped specifically for the General Motors Interior-Design Department. Taken together, they\u2019re now considered the first prominent all-female design team in American history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Peggy Sauer redesigned an Oldsmobile Fiesta Carousel station wagon for the 1958 exhibition.
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne thing that GM specifically did was to promote them with what they called the \u2018Feminine Autoshow,\u2019\u201d says Veit. \u201cThis was really a time for them to show their taste and design prowess. They designed two to three automobiles each, and really put in some interesting innovations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the Corvette, \u201cThe Damsels\u201d introduced the first retractable seat belt, and they also developed other innovations, like glove compartments and light up mirrors \u2014 features that would remain in GM cars for decades to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey had fun storage consuls for picnics and for umbrellas, and they also put in some new safety features,\u201d says Veit. \u201cThey had some of the first safety latches that could be controlled on the dashboard for children in the back seat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Carousel’s child-friendly backseat included storage for toys, a magnetic game board and child-proof latches that could be controlled from the dashboard.
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Veit says that \u201cThe Damsels\u201d were thinking more \u201cholistically\u201d about automobiles and the different ways that a car would actually be used in the real world. But \u201cThe Damsels\u201d weren\u2019t the only women in the design field at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were a lot of women in America, as well as Europe, who were designing and kind of flying under the radar either because they weren\u2019t taken seriously, or because they were working with their husbands and they were kind of in their shadow at the time,\u201d Veit says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the story of \u201cThe Damsels\u201d didn\u2019t end happily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was kind of a brief blip, unfortunately,\u201d Veit says. \u201cThey brought them in around 1955, and in 1958, Harley Earl retired. The man who came after him kind of famously said, \u2018No women are going to stand next to my male senior designers.\u2019 So by the early \u201860s, they were gone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the women \u2014 Suzanne Vanderbilt \u2014 did stay on at General Motors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Suzanne Vanderbilt demonstrating an early car phone and built-in memo pad\u2014custom features for her 1958 exhibition-model Cadillac Eldorado Seville.
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vanderbilt never did stop pushing the boundaries forward, even if her company wasn\u2019t responsive. In the 1960s she developed a patent for an inflatable seatback, which allowed for a new approach in automotive back and lumbar support. GM considered her invention, but didn\u2019t actually bring the model into production until decades later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the women who were referred to as \u2018The Damsels of Design\u2019 by GM, they really thought of themselves as designers for men and women,\u201d says Veit. \u201cThey didn\u2019t see themselves as designers just for women. I think that kind of design thinking was very forward at the time, and carries over to today \u2014 people are designing for people. Female designers today don\u2019t want to be thought of as designing for women. They want to be thought of as designing for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Glennie with the Fancy Free Corvette, 1958
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Linder loading a matching set of luggage into the trunk of her exhibition-model Impala Martinique
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Pohlman demonstrates the glove box dictaphone included in the exhibition-model of her Buick Shalimar.
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
In 1958, to promote the Damsels’ work, Earl organized what was called the Feminine Auto Show in GM’s Styling Dome.
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Gere Kavanaugh transformed GM’s Styling Dome for the 1958 exhibition, which included ninety rented canaries housed in floor-to-ceiling net columns.
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Glennie’s Fancy Free Corvette for the 1958 Feminine Auto Show\u2014an exhibition staged to promote the female designers’ work
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Glennie’s Fancy Free Corvette for the 1958 Feminine Auto Show\u2014an exhibition staged to promote the female designers’ work.
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Marjorie Ford Pohlman with her exhibition-model Tampico Buick Special convertible.
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Sandra Longyear’s exhibition-model Bonneville Polaris convertible for Pontiac featured a storage compartment for a picnic.
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The purple interior included a hidden umbrella compartment and a somewhat absurd overhead light fixture.
(Courtesy General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

-Frankman, E., & Raphael, T. J. (2016, April 11). The Damsels of Design: The women who changed automotive history: The takeaway<\/em>. WNYC Studios. https:\/\/www.wnycstudios.org\/podcasts\/takeaway\/segments\/gms-all-female-design-team<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

I loved, loved, loved reading about this design group! Seeing how much beauty and care they put into their car designs just makes me so happy. If I knew about these women before, I might have gone into automotive design. I have never really been into cars that much, but I adore classic cars and wish those designs could make a resurgence. There are a lot of amazing ideas they came up with to make life more joyful for car owners, and I’d love to use them as inspiration for my capstone design. I think the article is correct in dubbing these classic car designs as neither masculine nor feminine but just elegant. The gender neutrality of today’s boxy SUVs is all well and good, but bringing this style and grace back into car design without it costing an arm and a leg is what we should be pushing for. And for Pete’s sake, let’s not go in the hyper-masculine direction of the Cybertruck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For all of the horror that emerged from the Second World War, there were some bright spots: With the men out fighting, women were brought into the workplace. In the mid 1950s, one visionary executive believed women could have a lasting impact on the automobile industry. Harley J. Earl, then the vice president of design […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":20853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-focus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20870,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20852\/revisions\/20870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}