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Austerity Fashion 1945-1951 rebuilding fashion cultures in post-war London Bethan Bide Royal Holloway, University of London Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Figure 1: Second-hand shoes for sale at a market in the East End, by Bob Collins, 1948. Museum of London, IN37802. 2 Declaration of authorship I Bethan Bide hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Bethan Bide 8 September 2017 3 Abstract This thesis considers the relationship between fashion, austerity and London in the years 1945 to 1951—categorised by popular history as a period of austerity in Britain. London in the late 1940s is commonly remembered as a drab city in a state of disrepair, leading fashion historians to look instead to Paris and New York for signs of post-war energy and change. Yet, looking closer at the business of making and selling fashion in London, it becomes clear that, behind the shortages, rubble and government regulation, something was stirring. The main empirical section of the thesis is divided into four chapters that explore different facets of London’s fashionable networks. These consider how looking closely at the writing, making, selling and watching of austerity fashion can help us build a better understanding of London fashion in the late 1940s. Together, these chapters reveal that austerity was a driving force for dynamic processes of change— particularly in relation to how women’s ready-to-wear fashions were made and sold in the city—and that a variety of social, economic and political conditions in post- war Britain changed the way manufacturers, retailers and consumers understood the symbolic capital of London fashion. Placing material culture at the centre of this story and taking a ‘more-than- representational’ approach to research creates new historical perspectives and exposes the processes and networks concealed within the social and gender hierarchies of London fashion at this time. It redraws the map of the fashion city, making connections between the city-centre and suburb, West End stores and East End workrooms, and national government policies and local business strategies. In mapping these connections, the thesis reveals how this period of austerity, and Londoners’ responses to it, formed the mould that would shape London’s trajectory as a fashion city for the rest of the twentieth century. 4 Acknowledgements This thesis owes a huge amount to so many people, but none more so than my two excellent supervisors, Beatrice Behlen and David Gilbert. I am extremely grateful for all their help and kindness—particularly for Beatrice’s unfailing generosity in sharing her time and considerable knowledge with me, and for David’s commitment to getting this project off the ground and his continued guidance and enthusiasm. Most of all, I thank them for advising, challenging, teaching and investing in me throughout. I owe my growth as a researcher and writer over the past three years to their support, and I shall miss our enjoyable (and often extended) supervision sessions enormously. This project was made possible by the AHRC CDA scheme and cooperation between the Museum of London and Royal Holloway. I am particularly indebted to Melina Plottu and Tim Long at the Museum for their friendly help in the costume store, as well as the assistance of the wider History Collections team. I am grateful for the supportive environment of the Geography Department at Royal Holloway, especially Harriet Hawkins, Innes Keighren, Phil Crang and the entire Landscape Surgery group, and particularly thank Felix Driver for the stimulating conversations about research. I would also like to express gratitude to Agnès Rocamora and Christopher Breward who examined this thesis and facilitated an extremely stimulating viva. Thanks are also due to Caroline Evans and Peter Scott for their comments on parts of this work; to Edwina Ehrman, Jade Halbert, Liz Tregenza, Lorraine Smith and Lucie Whitmore for their advice; to everyone who contributed to The Look of Austerity conference; to the Design History Society for their generous travel grant; to all the archivists and curators who assisted me with my research, particularly to Jill Carey, Pam Parmal, Wendy Bentall and all the staff at Hackney Library and the John Lewis Partnership Heritage Centre; to Leo Mellor; and to Shaun Cole, whose continued interest in my work is much appreciated. Finally, thanks to my friends and family for their unfailing support, particularly my parents, brilliant siblings, and grandparents, whose stories made me rethink post-war austerity. Thanks also to Cole, who remains the most patient proof-reader I know. 5 6 Table of contents: Archival encounter no. 1 – 82.31/2: Black wool Traina-Norell dress 13 1. Introduction 17 London, fashion and austerity ................................................................................. 21 Materiality, archives and disruptive museum objects ............................................. 27 Writing, making, selling and watching austerity fashion ......................................... 33 Archival encounter no. 2 – 66.12/3: Orange trousers in velvet corduroy 37 2. Methodology 41 Working with the Museum of London’s fashion collections ................................... 43 Towards more-than-representational fashion histories .......................................... 48 Archival encounter no. 3 – 68.58: Double-breasted overcoat from 1946 53 3. Writing austerity fashion 57 The New Look: making a fashion mythology ........................................................... 62 Challenging the mythology of the New Look .......................................................... 66 London experiences of the New Look ..................................................................... 70 Defining the New Look in London ........................................................................... 80 Reading the materiality of text and image .............................................................. 98 Archival encounter no. 4 – 64.128: Huppert’s check wool Utility dress 101 4. Making austerity fashion 105 Mapping the changing geographies of London Fashion in the 1940s ..................... 109 How austerity reshaped London’s fashion industry ................................................ 128 Long-term impacts of austerity on London fashion ................................................ 179 Evaluating the impact of austerity on London fashion ............................................ 192 Archival encounter no. 5 – 77.122/3: Homemade bedspread dress 197 5. Selling austerity fashion 201 Beyond bomb rubble and boarded windows: rethinking the impact of austerity on fashion retail .................................................................................. 207 More than window-dressing: display and spectacle in the West End ..................... 212 Bentalls of Kingston Upon Thames: the post-war prosperity of a suburban department store ............................................................................................... 254 Make do and spend: balancing retailers’ optimism against consumer experiences 283 Archival encounter no. 6 – 2010.3/1a: Brown snakeskin-effect Utility shoes 287 6. Watching austerity fashion 291 The stuff of optimism, aspiration and resistance .................................................... 299 Darker materialities: fear, uncertainty and frustration ........................................... 314 Selling London fashions on- and off-screen ............................................................ 329 Re-watching austerity fashions ............................................................................... 339 Archival encounter no. 7 – Z875a-b: Dolcis red suede shoes 343 7. Conclusion 347 ‘Paris makes fashion, London makes clothes’ ......................................................... 349 Austerity and the rapid growth of ready-to-wear ................................................... 351 The impact of more-than-representational research processes ............................. 354 Towards more-than-representational museum displays ......................................... 359 Archival encounter no. 8 – 67.108/2: Skirt and jacket in red and white spots 365 8. Table of figures 369 9. Bibliography 379 8 9 Figure 2: City bomb damage at Newgate Street, 29 September 1940. Arthur Cross. Museum of London, IN6892. 10 Devastated is Estuary; devastation remains waste and shock. This ending is not the end, more like the cleared spaces around St Paul’s and the gutted City after the fire-raid. Geoffrey Hill, ‘In Memorium: Gillian Rose’1 1 Hill, A Treatise of Civil Power, 38. 11 12 Archival encounter no. 1: 82.31/2: Black wool dress with Traina-Norell label Figure 3: Black wool dress with Traina-Norell label. Museum of London, 82.31/2. Austerity Fashion It is August 2015 in the Museum of London costume storeroom, and laid out in front of me on white acid-free tissue is a black wool dress about which little is recorded in the Museum’s catalogue. The dress is an interesting piece of design history; it was made by Traina-Norell, an American fashion house formed in 1941 out of a partnership between New York designer Norman Norell and Anthony Traina, a wholesale clothing manufacturer.1 Its style and maker provide a rare example of the emerging ‘American Look’ in the Museum of London’s collection, but today I am looking for clues that might illuminate something about the circumstances