Clothing during
the Second World War
The Second World War affected European citizens in many different aspects of their lives. Fashion was one of these aspects, related to citizens’ private life, that was heavily influenced by the tragic event.
During the war, it became more difficult to produce clothes, because the material such as wool and nylon needed to make them was used to produce military uniforms instead. The production of women clothes was stopped to allow the production of uniforms for soldiers, which was far more urgent. New materials such as rayon and synthetic fibers were employed to create clothes for women, which were similar to military uniforms in their texture and they had very few decorations. The most common women clothes were pantsuits, tight skirts accompanied by belts to accentuate the waist and various blouses. Practicality became more important than appearance. As a result, jackets and pants with pockets, so as to carry documents and money, were now the most worn pieces of clothes. Before the war, pants were only worn in factories, but now they were common in both a women’s free time and her private life.
When wearing skirts, women did not wear stockings because they were made out of nylon, which was now used for the uniforms and could not be used for women. Women started to paint a tiny line behind their legs to make them look like they were wearing stockings. Women used men’s old clothes to create new clothes for their children. Fashion magazines were a great help for them because they offered suggestions about how to transform hats, gloves and socks and also how to sew properly.
In many countries, governments acted to ration materials to produce uniforms and women had to make sacrifices either to find clothes or to reinvent old clothes. France was an exception because fashion had always had a central position in this country. French women, especially in Paris, could not accept wearing just simple and basic clothing and kept wearing fancy clothes in spite of the war restrictions, wasting many valuable materials with extravagant decorations, buttons and skirts.
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One may think that in wartime it does not make any sense to follow fashion or to be dressed in nice and elegant clothes due to the priorities given to other matters. However, for those people who suffered because of the war, it was important to be given a sense of normality that fashion could give them.