FOIAWEAR — MARION FRIESWYK / Mapping the Invasion Tee

FOIAWEAR / ARCHIVE SERIES 017

Before D-Day, someone had to turn intelligence into terrain — and Marion Frieswyk was the first woman to do it.

In 1942, the 21-year-old graduate student was recruited out of Clark University by geographer Arthur Robinson for the OSS. She became the first woman in the Map Division's Cartography Section, and one of its finest: producing customised maps and painstaking 3D topographic models that supported strategic studies and the military's operational plans for the United States and its allies.

The maps mattered because words alone could not show a beach's gradient, a ridgeline's dead ground, or where an invasion could land. Her relief models of coastlines and terrain helped commanders see the ground they were about to assault.

When the OSS dissolved in 1945, she stayed with the core group of cartographers, and went on to work in the CIA's Cartography Division until 1958 — part of a lineage that runs from the OSS back to William Donovan's Coordinator of Information, and forward to today's CIA Cartography Center.

The artwork is a stylised tribute — an island in contour lines, with the arrow marking the landing beach. It is not a real map.

This shirt is offered in both dark and light garment colours — the map in copper on Black, Navy, Graphite, and in a matching dark-ink print on Blossom, Grey, Ivory.

The QR code on the front opens the CIA's article on Marion Frieswyk, the source for everything above: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/marion-frieswyk-the-first-female-intelligence-cartographer/

Garment: Comfort Colors 1717 garment-dyed t-shirt. Heavyweight 6.1 oz/yd² (206.8 g/m²), 100% ring-spun US cotton, pre-shrunk, relaxed fit, double-needle stitched with no side seams and a sewn-in label. Sizes S–4XL. Printed on the front at 300 DPI; plain back. The main artwork prints at 10 × 10 in and the QR at 1.8 × 1.8 in.

Care: machine wash cold, inside out, with like colours. Tumble dry low. Do not iron directly on the printed area.

FOIAWEAR is an independent brand and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Central Intelligence Agency or the United States government.