1940’s in fashion for women in WW2. Trends, utility dresses, seamed stockings, peplum’s, shoulder pads, and the post war New Look.
Women in World War 2 left us an iconic and beguiling style which is forever celebrated in movies, books and magazines. Rationing encouraged women to “make do and mend”. With all resources going to the war effort, Fabric shortage meant longer skirts and less revealing evening dresses. Austerity was reflected by a more austere fashion in the early 1940’s. Makeup and hairstyles however never looked better.
Browse the 1940’s fashion trends as worn by women in that troubled decade. Find inspiration for your next 1940’s style dress, victory rolls hairstyle.
Now you know the highlights, dive in to our archive of 1940’s fashion history. Find out how women in WW2 lived, worked, served in the forces and of course dressed.
Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris from Pittsburgh USA, is now acknowledged as one of the great photographers of his generation. His documentation of the daily lives of African American women and men in a collection of some 80,000 photographs, is quite simply unique. The Photographs of Charles Harris African American Women of the 1940’s We’ve picked out …
Visionary designer forerunner to Dior – In 1938, a young American female fashion designer named Elizabeth Hawes, an author, a journalist, a political activist and union organiser with the foresight of Chanel and Dior and a razor sharp wit that made her the Dorothy Parker of fashion, published a book called Fashion is Spinach, a long forgotten …
When tobacco tied in with 1940s fashion allure – Whilst the War Production Board had begun pushing sensible restrictions in women’s clothing through its L-38 Apparel order, silhouettes had tended toward the slim side in tobacco advertising since the mid 1930s, particularly in Marlboro cigarettes, a brand, though chiefly remembered for its cowboy image of the …
Vintage advice for bespectacled girls 1943 – We generally flee like mad from statistics, but the other day we ran smack into some figures on girls who wear glasses, that sent us dashing out to find out more about them. Do you know that you and some 25,000,000 of your sisters in the United States wear …
Rare Images of American Black Women in WW2 Service. Researched by Barbara Lewis Burger- National US Archives It is difficult enough to find photographs of ordinary black women in WW2 who served in the US Forces in the 1940s, and extraordinarily difficult to find images of women who served, as many thousands did. Most of …
Colour 1940s Fashion from AV Geeks & Prelinger Archive – In full colour from 1942 – a full colour 1940s fashion showcase film made by Butterick to promote their war era dress patterns magazine. Digitised and uploaded to the Prelinger Archive by those great collectors of all things educational in old film – AV Geeks. You can buy …
An illustrated ode to the ubiquitous ‘brolly’ “We moved under the umbrella out of the street light, fumbling for certain footing between the tree roots. ‘Will you hold the umbrella?’ She took the imitation leather with the white stitching in her hands. ‘Kiss me.’ She leaned across the steel between us. ‘Do you think we should?’ I …
Glamourdaze meets author Tam Francis World War Two, jitterbug dresses, swing dancing, swanky cocktails, and vintage living are hinted at in THE GIRL IN THE JITTERBUG DRESS back clover blurb! Everything a Glamourdaze gal could want in a summer read all wrapped up in a compelling fiction novel written especially for vintage enthusiasts. Successful vintage …
New Gamine Figure of 1949 turns heads American women, battle-scarred survivors of the 1947 style revolution, when the New Look took over, are hearing disquieting reports from the fashion front: Having made over their figures for the New Look, was it possible that they were going to have to do it all over again? The …
British Wartime Tutorial from 1942 – If you want a new hat, now that hats are rationed, there are ways and means. Turbans are the means and Anne Edwards – fashion editor of Woman shows us some of the ways. Method 1: Having tied the knot on top of the head, you can see how easy …