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WOMEN IN WARTIME ii WOMEN IN WARTIME Dress Studies from Picture Post 1938–1945 GERALDINE HOWELL BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Geraldine Howell, 2019 Geraldine Howell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. viii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: Picture Post, Vol. 12, No. 1, July 5 1941. (© John Frost Newspapers / Alamy Stock Photo) This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Licence. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-350-00092-6 ePDF: 978-1-350-00093-3 eBook: 978-1-350-00094-0 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. CONTENTS List of Figures vi Acknowledgements viii Introducing Picture Post 1 1 Beauty’s blueprint 25 2 Fashion stories from everyday life 41 3 Picture Post shows life on less 59 4 Britain and the first fashions of war 71 5 Practical living with Picture Post 89 6 Picture Post reports on wartime clothing initiatives 113 7 Making and looking after clothes 125 8 A fashion for fitness 137 9 Epilogue: Picture Post reports on fashion news from France 151 Conclusion 159 Notes 167 Select bibliography 204 Index 208 LIST OF FIGURES 1 ‘Boleros for Mother and Daughter’ 2 2 ‘Sunday Suits’ 3 3 ‘Old Clothes Shop’ 9 4 ‘In the Home of a Tynesider’ 11 5 ‘The Taking of a Fashion Magazine Photograph’ (1) 18 6 ‘The Taking of a Fashion Magazine Photograph’ (2) 20 7 ‘Outdoor Mannequins in Training on the Beach’ 26 8 ‘Lunchtime in the Bond Street Mannequins’ Restaurant’ 27 9 ‘Glamour Girls as the Audience Sees Them – With All Their Glamour’ 28 10 ‘Setting the Styles for the Modern Corset-Making Industry’ 30 11 Ambrose Wilson Corsets 32 12 ‘She Looks into a Dermascope’ 33 13 ‘ . at the Hair and Beauty Fair’ 35 14 ‘Her Hands Are Manicured’ 37 15 ‘And This Is the Result: The Transformed Charlady Sees Herself in the Glass’ 38 16 ‘Models for the Queen’ 42 17 ‘The Queen with the Little Girl’ 43 18 ‘The House That Launched the Crinoline Adopts the Full Flowing Skirt’ 45 19 ‘Flower-Time Fashions’ 48 20 ‘Dancing on the Greens’ 52 21 ‘Comrades of the Road: A Tandem’ 54 22 ‘Start of the Day: Sunday Morning Roll Call’ 56 23 ‘Horticulture: Earthing a Potato Clamp’ 57 24 ‘Saturday Evening in a Dance Hall’ 60 25 ‘Street Scene in Whitechapel’ 61 26 ‘Expressions in the Street Market: Dubious’ 62 27 ‘Washing-day in the Backyards’ 63 28 ‘After a Whole Day Looking for a Job, Alfred Smith Comes Home’ 65 29 ‘Outside: Wife and Children Wait’ 66 30 ‘The Girl Who Has Taken Her Place in the War Machine’ 73 31 ‘The First War Fashion’ 75 32 ‘Floral Two-piece . by Windsor Water Woollies’ 77 33 ‘The Shopping Trip’ 80 LIST OF FIGURES vii 34 ‘The Sailor Suit’ 81 35 ‘The Jacket’ 82 36 ‘The Dinner Frock’ 83 37 ‘Here One Must Sleep Sitting Up’ 86 38 ‘Here All One’s Life Is Public’ 87 39 ‘The Underground Sewing Bee’ 88 40 ‘Lord Woolton recommends oatmeal. Do grocers back this up?’ 89 41 ‘A Brush Saves Lipstick’ 91 42 ‘The Pinnie Dress’ 94 43 ‘Rainbow Trousers’ 95 44 ‘Alice-in-Wonderland’ 96 45 ‘Should Women Wear Trousers?’ 98 46 ‘Our photographer went out to snap women in trousers . .’ 99 47 ‘Dresses. Here is a typical Utility Dress’ 101 48 ‘Coloured Cotton Wash Frocks Are Practical For A Wartime Summer’ 102 49 ‘At Home Dress’ 104 50 ‘Daytime Parties’ 105 51 ‘The Prettiest Shirt of the Summer’ 107 52 ‘Classic Sweaters and a Cricketer’s Shirt’ 108 53 Life Magazine Cover, 13 September 1943 110 54 ‘Retired Farmer’s Wife . .’ from ‘The Happy Knitters’ 116 55 ‘New Clothes for Homeless Children’ 118 56 ‘Only Eight Coupons Left . .’ 122 57 ‘The Mayor of Shoreditch Lends a Hand’ 123 58 ‘And Here’s What They Make . First a Suit, Second, a Summer Frock’ 127 59 ‘The Bedspread She Sleeps Under at Night becomes the Coat She Wears in the day’ 129 60 ‘The Jersey That’s Good Enough for Evening’ 132 61 ‘Waistcoats from Skins’ 134 62 ‘A Good Spring Crop Needs Autumn Hoeing’ 138 63 ‘Land Girls Gather Straw for the Cows’ 139 64 ‘Girls Are Taking Over The Balloon Barrage’ 141 65 ‘The Sideways Bend . .’ 144 66 ‘They Sleep Under Canvas’ 145 67 ‘Day’s End in a Farming Camp’ 146 68 ‘YOU asked these questions . .’ 149 69 ‘The Incidental Background . .’ 154 70 ‘The Fashion Trade is Ready for Peace: The Models in Reserve’ 155 71 ‘London: A Digby Morton Suit’ 157 72 ‘The Story of the A.T.A.’ 162 73 ‘The Dressier Dress’ 163 74 ‘The Unbelted Coat’ 164 75 ‘Lunch-time for the Workers from Chesfield Park Farming Camp in Hertfordshire’ 166 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first thank you must be to Gale-Cengage Learning for having had the vision to digitize Picture Post. Without this online resource, research would have been far harder and involved endless days in libraries working with friable paper copies. The Picture Post Historical Archive is easy to access and to use, requiring only membership of any institution subscribing to it. I joined the Westminster Reference Library, which holds the Picture Post archive as part of its Newspapers and Magazines Collection, and I am grateful to the Library for both taking the Archive and offering free access to it. From its inception this project has benefitted from the advice and guidance of a small, dedicated team at Bloomsbury Publishing. Thank you to Hannah Crump who piloted me through the proposal and commissioning stages and helped me to establish something of the parameters of the work at a crucial time in its early development. Thereafter, I have had the tireless support of Frances Arnold, Editorial Director for Visual Arts, whose encouragement and thoughtfulness have been so much appreciated, particularly during the period of reflection and reorganization following the project review. Thank you also to Editorial Assistant Yvonne Thouroude for listening to worries and talking things through. For the care, attention to detail and professionalism with which my text was prepared for publication, thank you to Vinu Vijayamurugan and the team at Integra. I am especially indebted to Professor Lou Taylor for agreeing to read the manuscript in draft. She is always clear and candid and her thorough and meticulous review was the catalyst for some serious rethinking of both text and structure. I would also like to thank Caroline Theakstone, Research Editor at Getty Images, for all her help in finding the images I wanted. Her time and energies on my behalf have meant I have been able to include a large proportion of the photographs on my wish list and deliver the sort of illustrated text I aspired to. Thank you also to Neil Stewart, Digital Library Manager at the London School of Economics, for permission to publish the ‘Old Clothes Shop’ from John Thompson’s photographs from Street Life in London. In a small number of cases it was not possible to establish or confirm image copyright for either individual photographs or whole photo-stories. This has meant some key articles are discussed without illustration. These include, for example, ‘Enough of All This’, ‘ARP Warden to Glamour Girl’, ‘A Mayfair Girl Gets Married’, ‘Fashions for the Farm’ and ‘How to Run Your Dress Allowance’. All of these are, of course, readily available to view via the Picture Post Historical Archive which by curating and maintaining access to the magazine is keeping this wealth of material in the public domain. Such a resource is all the more valuable as it becomes the only way of seeing photographs whose primary provenance is now either lost or unclear. INTRODUCING PICTURE POST Dress, fashion and Picture Post Picture Post magazine provides a unique archive of dress, fashion and fashionability covering a wartime period that witnessed unprecedented social upheaval and hardship. This book sets out to explore the many ways in which Picture Post stories reveal the sheer diversity of clothing and beauty culture practised during this extraordinary time and the ways in which the dress and accessories captured on camera narrated their own discrete histories. Women from many different backgrounds and of varying ages, often reflecting widely divergent aspirations and opportunities, can all be found within the pages of Picture Post. Close scrutiny of their clothing and accessories, hair and beauty ideas, and the nature of their association with the fashions and the fashionable of the period, all communicate much about the social fabric of individual lives and the cultural contexts which shaped them.