Fashion Brief
Street-style is hardly new – it dates back to Edwardian times. To mark the 70th anniversary of the second world war, forties street-style – and, in particular the six years of the war – is in focus at the Imperial War museum. Fashion on the Ration explores how living in this extraordinary time affected the way people dressed. Here are five takeaways from the exhibition.
Photograph: Imperial War Museum
There were fashion takes on new necessities
Including blackout buttons, which were shiny and attached to lapels to make the wearer visible on the streets after a blackout. The fashionably inclined would have worn more design-aware ones such as luminous flowers available from stores like Selfridges.
Clothes were rationed but creativity got a free pass
Introduced in 1941, clothes rationing meant coming up with ways of finding a look on limited resources, or whatever was to hand, such as bracelets made from aircraft components and bridesmaids dresses made with parachute fabric. The best examples here are a bra and knickers made from silk RAF maps, once belonging to Countess Mountbatten. Innovative and stylish, that combination works in any era.
Women wore their propaganda on their sleeve – or round their necks
Jacqmar of London, a Mayfair scarf brand designed by Arnold Lever, were a bit like the slogan T-shirts of their day. The silk scarves, some of which were designed while Lever was serving for the RAF, were akin to elegant sandwich boards. All sorts of messages – encouraging people to recycle, and campaigning for French liberation – came as part of the illustration.
Utility clothing could be quite stylish
If people weren’t getting creative with a needle and thread, the other fashion option post-rationing in 1941 was the utility range, government-produced clothing. Under “austerity regulations”, these designs could only use a limited range of fabrics, short pockets, no cuffs on trousers and heels only two inches high. With all of those caveats, it actually looked quite smart, simple and cooly practical, a combination that is, actually, totally modern.
The war’s influence on fashion extends far beyond those six years
Most obviously through kickstarting a reaction against restraint. See Dior’s New Look, revealed in 1947. A celebration of volume, using yards and yards of fabric and the exaggerated femininity of the Bar jacket, it was two fingers up at clothes rationing. Hugely influential, Dior’s look lead to the full skirts and nipped in waists of the 50s – a decade where conspicuous consumption, from fashion to furniture, came as standard. And so, arguably, modern fashion began.
Photograph: Imperial War Museum
