Ruth Clarage was a notable designer best known for her contributions to resort wear in mid-twentieth-century Jamaica. Like many women working in the fashion industry during this period, her career remains under-documented, obscured by the archival silences that continue to limit our understanding of the region’s complex design heritage. In my own collection, I have several garments produced and handprinted by Clarage, offering valuable material evidence of her distinctive style and methods. Her work is also relatively available on vintage clothing platforms, which suggests a level of commercial success and enduring appeal. For these reasons, Clarage’s career warrants closer attention. Not only as an example of mid-century resort wear but for what it reveals about the intersection of tourism, design, and identity in post-war Jamaica. 

 

Who Was Ruth Clarage?

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Born in the United States, Clarage relocated from Chicago to Jamaica in 1954 with her husband, Richard. Together, they established Ruth Clarage Jamaica Shops a brand that quickly gained popularity for its vibrant and recognisably “tropical” aesthetic. According to family accounts, she was among the first designers to develop colourful flowers and fruit prints which later became known as “island fabrics”. Their shops, which eventually spread across tourist hubs including Montego Bay and Ocho Rios, catered primarily to North American visitors in search of fashionable souvenirs and island-inspired apparel.

 

Clarage’s success, however, must be understood within a broader creative ecosystem. By the time she arrived on the island, Jamaica already had a flourishing and dynamic design culture shaped by local talent. Her contemporaries included designers and artists such as Doris Campbell, Daphne Logan, Ivy Ralph, and Rhonda Jackson who worked for Textiles of Jamaica, a company instrumental in shaping a national textile identity. Clarage entered a landscape where designers and makers were already engaged in articulating a distinctly Jamaican aesthetic through design. It is therefore problematic to attribute the invention of fruit and floral motifs in Jamaican fashion solely to Clarage. These themes had been circulating in international resort wear for some time, particularly in American and European markets where “exotic” aesthetics had become more popular. Additionally, to suggest Clarage introduced such imagery erases the deep-rooted visual cultures already present on the island and risks reinforcing colonial narratives of Western innovation in non-Western spaces.

 

That said, Clarage did play an important role in shaping how Jamaica was imagined and consumed by foreign visitors. So, her contribution does not necessarily lay in the originality of her motifs, but in how she curated and sold a particular vision of “Jamaica” and “Jamaicanness” to a North American tourist market. Her hand-printed designs reveal a careful attention to her surroundings: musicians, donkeys, market women, and island flora all became stylised emblems in her textiles. These motifs were not just decorative; they were part of a larger branding strategy that linked clothing, souvenirs, and lifestyle products into a cohesive, commercially viable “Jamaican” identity.

 

Clarage’s designs reflected a sophisticated understanding of the tourist gaze. Her prints operated as visual shorthand for the island experience, attempting to evoke leisure, authenticity, and exotic appeal. One of the most interesting aspects of her design philosophy was the use of identical prints across garments for both men and women. For instance, a repeated donkey motif appeared on both men’s shirts and women’s dresses in different colours. This unisex application was both playful and strategic. It suggested a shared visual language of leisure, allowing couples to coordinate their outfits which was a subtle yet effective way of marketing a lifestyle brand rather than just individual items of clothing.

 

Such design choices perhaps also speak to changing ideas of gender and dress during the mid-century period. The casual, matching aesthetic suited the relaxed codes of resort wear, while also reflecting wider shifts in fashion towards more informal, unisex styles. In this way, Clarage’s work can be read not only as a commercial enterprise but as a cultural artefact situated within the social transformations of the 1950s and 60s.

 

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Jamaica Fashion Guild Ltd

 

Her influence extended beyond fashion retail. Clarage was also a member of the Jamaica Fashion Guild Ltd, founded in 1966, an organisation aimed at promoting locally designed and made garments and fostering connections between designers and the tourism industry. The Guild played a crucial role in professionalising fashion in Jamaica, positioning it as a legitimate and economically valuable sector. Through her involvement, Clarage helped solidify the links between fashion, national identity, and economic development. Particularly at a moment when Jamaica was moving towards and eventually gaining independence in 1962.

 

Despite her contributions, Clarage remains a relatively marginal figure in academic and popular histories of Caribbean fashion. This is symptomatic of broader issues in the historiography of design in the region Clarage’s story invites a more nuanced approach: one that acknowledges her entrepreneurial skill and aesthetic influence, while also situating her within a contested cultural field shaped by colonial legacies, racial dynamics, and the demands of global tourism.

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Stories that remain untold

 

More broadly, the study of figures like Clarage underscores the urgent need for greater archival attention to Caribbean fashion histories. Designers, makers, seamstresses, and artists, many of them women, have played crucial roles in shaping the region’s visual and material culture. Yet their stories remain scattered, undocumented, or housed in private collections. Clarage’s legacy, partial as it may be, opens a window onto a moment of transformation in Jamaican fashion history, when the island was being reimagined both from within and without.

 

In revisiting her work, we start to question: what kinds of stories get told in the history of fashion? Whose creativity is recognised, and whose is rendered invisible? How do design practices intersect with questions of place, identity, and belonging? Clarage’s career does not provide simple answers, but it does offer a case study through which we can reflect on the entangled histories of dress, tourism, and representation in the Caribbean.