Find archive articles on WW II Fashion from the 1940’s. Our site has great information from old magazine and newspaper articles on WW II fashion trends.
In the Digital Age we simply don’t think much about pants on women – but they sure thought about it in the Forties – and everyone was expected to have an opinion on the subject. This article is about the dust-up that was caused at a new Jersey high school when some of the girls came to school in pants.
Two Weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack, the New York fashion industry hastily manufactured profiles that were both feminine and practical for the new lives American women were about to have thrust upon them. Overnight, durable and launderable fabrics became uppermost in the thinking of the new war workers and culottes gained greater importance as the need for bicycles became a viable mode of transport for getting to the defense plants.
Eleven months before America’s entry into the war found sailor suits playing a heavy role in the thought processes of the Great American Fashion Designers.
Click here to read about the military influence on W.W. I fashion…
Months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Washington was gearing-up for the fight by restricting the availability of certain fabrics to the fashion industry and diverting these materials to the defense industry. This started an open discussion in fashion circles as to whether it would simply be best to raise the hemlines until the national emergency was over.
The Fashion Originators Guild termed shorter skirts silly and added that dresses ‘are just as short today as decency and grace will permit.
This article tells of the origin and fast times of the zoot suit. Although the garment was popularized by Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles, it had it’s origins in Harlem, New York, where it was known as the root suit.
It’s hard to believe – but Victory Fashion hit the American home front before it was even called the home front. However by mid-1941 Americans were pretty outraged by fascist aggression: the U-boats, London bombed, Nanking ravaged, France invaded – the list goes on. When this article went to press, we were not in the war but we were firmly on the Allied side. The word victory made its way into fashion circles and the nation’s couturiers began turning out novelty accessories and garments. Even the hairdressers contributed.
Who was it who deprived men of their suit vests and trouser cuffs? Who banned silk stockings? Who outlawed the flow in flowing skirts? Why, it was the War Production Board of course – click the title link if you want a name and a face…
A couple of paragraphs from a popular fashion industry trade magazine that pointed out that the white cotton knit crew-neck garment we call the T-shirt came into this world with the name quarter sleeve and had it’s origin in the U.S. Navy where it earned it’s popularity and soon spread to other branches of the U.S. military during the mid-to-late 1930s. When the war ended in 1945 the T-shirt was the only element of the uniform that American men wanted to keep.
There was another fashion innovations of W.W. II, click here to read about it…
In their book about American soldiers in the war-torn Britain of W.W. II, Overpaid, Over-Sexed and Over Here
When the fops answered the call in 1942, these are the hats and shoes they walked away wearing.
You will be able to easily print the attached page of fashion images.
On another note: the legendary fashion designer Christian Dior had a good deal of trouble with people who would illegally copy his designs; click here to read about that part of fashion history.
As far as superstitions and clothing are concerned, hats seem to be the one garment that has the most unfounded and irrational precepts attached to their existence. Plentiful are the dictates pertaining to where hats should never be placed or worn – these superstitions existed centuries before the Second World War, but for one citizen of San Angelo, Texas, he had his own beliefs where hats are concerned and some believed that, as a result, he was able to save the lives of 56 American servicemen…
This is a remarkably brief history of the W.P.B. restrictions on American necktie manufacturers during the Second World War.
A well illustrated wartime review concerning what the women of fashion could do to enhance life in spite of the government shortages.
The attached article from 1943 appeared in a number of publications throughout the nation in order to impart to the women (and perhaps a handful of the men) how urgent was the need for their used silk stockings.
More about silk on the W.W. II home front can be read here…
Click here to read about the woman who dictated many of the fabric restriction rules on the home front.
Halfway through 1944 American magazines began their individual count-downs until the war’s end; running with articles about the post-war world, the end of rationing, the demobilized military and the guaranteed boom that would come in the menswear industry. The attached fashion editorial appeared early in 1945 promotes the versatility of gabardine wool, it’s earliest appearance in the Middle ages, it’s use in uniforms and it’s newest application in sportswear.
The article is illustrated with five terrific color photographs.
Although there is black-out during the war years, the attached charts will give you a sense of the preferred suiting colors both before the war and upon it’s immediate conclusion. The pointy-headed soothsayers who attempt to predict which colors men will buy were very surprised to find that in the aftermath of World War II, American men were quite eager to buy browns and khaki-colored suiting after all.
Illustrated with pictures of Winston Churchill’s weird zipper suit and Joseph Stalin’s all purpose costume, 1940s fashion critic Elizabeth Hawes (1903 – 1971) taunts the Great-American-Male and challenges him to respond in kind by wearing copies of these comfortable threads:
Today’s business clothes were worked out by the winners of the Industrial Revolution, whose descendants are the big tycoons of our day…Aspirants to leadership and success normally copy the clothes of existent leaders. Isn’t it about time the most of you changed your suits?
Elizabeth Hawes wrote more on the topic of W.W. II fashions…
There can be no doubt that the fashion-craving lasses of the Thirties and Forties had a tough time of it! Coming of age during the the Great Depression, they spent too much time window-shopping as a result of the all too widespread economic deprivations that were the order of the day – only to be greeted on the other end by the fabric rationing that accompanied the Second World War. They had some good news in the form of a swanky garment that was called Hostess Gowns which were seen as ultra-feminine and tailored in the finer fabrics of the day:
Top-notch fashion stores are finding a new wartime boom in luxury hostess gowns and pajamas; new styles for home reflect the latest dress fashion trends. Ruffles, waistline draping, beads, sequins and marabou add luxury; a number of dressy models might also be taken for dinner gowns…
