Howell, Geraldine. "Fashion Stories from Everyday Life." Women in Wartime: Dress Studies from Picture Post 1938–1945
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Howell, Geraldine. "Fashion Stories From Everyday Life." Women in Wartime: Dress Studies from Picture Post 1938–1945. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. 41–58. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 8 Oct. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350000957.ch-003>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 8 October 2021, 11:31 UTC. Copyright © Geraldine Howell 2019. Released under a CC BY-NC-ND licence (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 2 FASHION STORIES FROM EVERYDAY LIFE Introduction This chapter brings together a selection of stories drawn from Picture Post’s first year and a half of publication from October 1938 to the spring of 1940. They reveal something of the range of fashionable clothing available – from popular seasonal and leisure styles to more established wardrobe classics – and the advent of specific types of uniform for women joining one of the civilian services now operating.1 Each provides interesting and sometimes intriguing individual clothing or fashion cameos, specific to times, places and people. Together they build a fuller understanding of the fashions and dress practices current across various demographics in the transition to war. The Queen as a fashion figurehead and the House of Hartnell In November 1938, Picture Post visited couturier Norman Hartnell for an article entitled ‘The Queen’s Dressmaker’.2 The photo-sequence showed Hartnell at work in his studio and included two photographs of evening wear designs-in-progress for his ‘Most Distinguished Client’, the Queen.3 Readers were told that the Queen’s recent state visit to Paris had inspired a new fashion there for ‘Highland style, dresses and coats in Scottish tartans’, a ‘Scottish vogue . to honour the Scottish Queen’.4 Hartnell’s royal ‘picture dresses’, influenced by those depicted in the work of the nineteenth-century painter Franz Winterhalter, had been much admired by Parisian couturiers,5 and Hartnell’s ‘challenge to France’ was considered to be a ‘serious one’.6 This was no doubt considerably assisted by his role as royal dressmaker, and autumn fashions that year continued to reflect interest in historical styles. The two designs photographed and captioned as ‘Models for the Queen to Wear’ revealed formal, full-length gowns with slender silhouettes. Opulently conceived, one in a pale sparkling fabric with a small train, the other in a darker material consonant with its fur trimmed collar and lower skirt, both had sumptuous fur accessories in the shape of a coat, muffler and stole. Here were examples of the highest of high fashion. 42 WOMEN IN WARTIME: DRESS STUDIES FROM PICTURE POST 1938–1945 Figure 16 ‘Models for the Queen: Before being sent to Buckingham Palace, everything the Queen will wear is inspected by Norman Hartnell. Sometimes, even at this moment, he will change the material for a coat or dress’. From ‘The Queen’s Dressmaker’, Picture Post, 19 November 1938, p. 27. Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Getty Images (3367142). FASHION STORIES FROM EVERYDAY LIFE 43 Figure 17 ‘The Queen with the Little Girl: The Queen visiting an evacuation school’, Picture Post, 25 November 1939, p. 40. Keystone/Hulton Royal Collection/Getty Images (3336171). The final picture in the story showed the Queen wearing a Hartnell three-quarter-length black velvet coat with Persian lamb trimming on both coat and halo hat, the modest leg- of-mutton sleeve design again reflecting the currency of historical detail. Readers were informed that Hartnell ‘had the task of creating everything the Queen wears, from head to foot: hair ornaments, hats, dresses, coats, furs, shoes, stockings, gloves and handbags’,7 as well as providing around ‘fifty complete outfits every season 44 WOMEN IN WARTIME: DRESS STUDIES FROM PICTURE POST 1938–1945 for the Queen’.8 This conveyed something of the royal consumption of clothing and accessories in the course of duty, offering interesting comparison with other wardrobes across the social spectrum. Described as ‘pre-eminently a British designer’, Picture Post reported that after visiting New York, Hartnell had praised the Americans for ‘make-up, stockings and accessories’ but felt they could not ‘touch the English woman for a certain “softness”’. While Americans were ‘“snappy” in their dress’ they were ‘neither “soft” nor “subtle”’ and Picture Post concluded that ‘Norman Hartnell should know’.9 A photograph taken of the Queen visiting an evacuation school a year later captures this sense of softly tailored fit. Wearing a dress and jacket with fur bolero and brimless peaked hat, the Queen is seen talking informally to a little girl evacuee.10 A double string of beads, small leaf brooch and soft clutch handbag accessorized the Queen’s unfussy outfit, and her quiet sense of style represented a classic elegance achieved through excellence in design and fabric. Another photograph taken of the Queen on a visit to Scotland in March 1940 also captured this soft elegance in a gently tailored coat with puffed sleeves and narrow draped lapels, worn with a small-crowned hat with decorated floral disc and a double string of pearls.11 The Queen would continue to act as a fashion figurehead throughout the war, her classic, royal chic indelibly associated with keeping up morale and carrying on. Other British couturiers featured in Picture Post Other British couture houses covered by Picture Post during this time also reflected evening opulence and an interest in history. The House of Motley,12 begun by three art students with an interest in theatre costume, had recently taken to designing off-stage clothing which Picture Post described as ‘often dramatic, but . not theatrical’.13 The photographs, illustrations rather than a story in themselves, showed seven images of evening wear styles and two larger pictures of the audience at a Motley show. The rather bare surroundings of the Motley catwalk might have accounted for the audience wearing a good deal of fur in coats, collars and hats but revealed at the same time that the use of fur in one way or another was a customary feature of contemporary fashion.14 Front and back images of Motley’s ‘Dove Dress’ showed a gathered and draped off-the-shoulder bodice fitting to the hip line and a full-length sash falling from behind. Described as having ‘classical simplicity’, this Grecian-style dress reflected another aspect of historically inspired design. Readers were reminded that Motley had launched the crinoline the previous season and a white satin and black lace full-length evening dress tied at the waist was considered to have ‘all the charm of the crinoline . without its discomfort’. This dress showed a generously full skirt falling in folds from a black bow at the back waist reflecting a muted version of Victorian and Edwardian style elements. Opulence was also revealed in a tailored evening jacket ‘in the style of an Indian prince’ FASHION STORIES FROM EVERYDAY LIFE 45 and made out of ‘bright pink wool embroidered with spangles and imitation jewels’. Here were colourful, statement clothes reflecting the signature drama of Motley and the exuberance of couture evening wear six months before war. Figure 18 ‘The House that Launched the Crinoline Adopts the Full Flowing Skirt: This lovely evening frock of white satin has an overdress of shadowy black lace’ From ‘Design for Spring Time’, Picture Post, 25 March 1939, p. 38. Horace Eliascheff/Picture Post/Getty Images (3374667). 46 WOMEN IN WARTIME: DRESS STUDIES FROM PICTURE POST 1938–1945 In November 1939, almost three months into Britain’s phoney war, Picture Post ran an article about ‘The First War-time Travelling Fashion Parade’ in a fashion feature entitled ‘Fashion Show on Wheels’.15 Responding to the fact that many ‘smart women’16 had left London after war was declared, couturier Digby Moreton, the Elizabeth Arden Beauty Salon, milliner Aage Thaarup and furrier Louis Woolf had created a travelling fashion show comprising the latest trends for clients now living in the country. The Picture Post photo-report captured four Bond Street mannequins taking the train to Bristol and then preparing for a runway show. The images concentrated more on the behind-the-scenes organization of the show than the actual fashions on offer but revealed in the process the importance that now attached to maintaining fashion sales as Britain moved into a state of war. There had been a noticeable downturn in consumer spending on clothing after war had been declared. This had already begun to cause redundancies in the dress trade and the travelling show had been one step taken to proactively reverse this trend.17 Readers were told that the show had been put on in order to fulfil the Queen’s wish that the ‘Bond Street Houses . should go on with their businesses and keep the unemployment figures down’.18 In an effort to do just that, thirty-six suits were shown, ‘costing, on the average, 18 guineas each’, along with the contents of ‘ten hat boxes’ and furs worth four thousand pounds.19 The article did not relate how many of the 150 guests at the Bath Hotel were persuaded to buy. A story from the Paris couture The workings of a Parisian fashion house and the job of making rather than designing clothes was the theme for Antonia’s White’s fashion feature called ‘Backstage at a Paris Fashion Show’.20 This intriguing behind-the-scenes photo-story explored working life in the couture house of Paquin and introduced readers to the various employees on whose individual skills and experience much of the successful operation of the house depended.