Post WW2 Fashions

JohnnyGottaKeyboard

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Can anyone point me to an online resource they use for various clothing trends by era? I am specifically interested in the post WW2 era in America (five years). But would be overjoyed to find a comprehensive guide.

I checked the stickie above and there is no section for clothing or fashion.
 

Trebor1415

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There are Sears catalogs online for most years. Here are some sources:

http://www.wishbookweb.com/

This one requires a paid or two week trial subscription

http://www.homeaccentstoday.com/art..._online_offer_views_of_vintage_lifestyles.php

Here's some lingerie catalogs, including some from the 40's

http://lingerie.lovetoknow.com/Vintage_Lingerie_Catalogs

And here's a book on Everyday Fashions from the 40's in Sears Catalogs.

For the price, and the fact they did some of the work for you, I'd order a copy.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0486269183/?tag=absowrit-20

And here's a few of the first links from a google search for "1940s fashion us" (I meant U.S.)

http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade40.html

http://www.wikihow.com/Dress-in-American-1940s-Fashion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930%E2%80%931945_in_fashion

http://www.film-classics.com/archives/4789

http://www.vintagefashionclub.com/1940s-fashion.html
 

Trebor1415

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One other thing I thought I'd mention.

Right at the end of the war rationing was still in effect and new clothes were hard to get.

U.S. servicemen were allowed to continue to wear their uniforms after their discharge until they could afford/find/purchase appropriate civilian clothes.

The servicemembers were given a patch, the "Honorable Service Discharge" patch (or something close to that name) to sew onto their uniform to show that they were discharged. (Otherwise they might be bothered by MP's, etc, looking for deserters or AWOL soldiers)

The patch was commonly called "the Ruptured Duck" by servicemembers because the Eagle on the patch looked like a sick duck.

My understanding is most servicemembers wanted to get out of uniform as quickly as possible so they tried to acquire civvie clothes as soon as they could. I do know though that for awhile, right in the middle of the mass demobilization, that men's clothing was hard to find in stores as the earlier discharge servicemen had depleted stocks and it took awhile for manufactuers to catch up to demand.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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Can anyone point me to an online resource they use for various clothing trends by era? I am specifically interested in the post WW2 era in America (five years). But would be overjoyed to find a comprehensive guide.

I checked the stickie above and there is no section for clothing or fashion.

I know, right? What an oversight.

There are some really good books, if you're so inclined, but since you asked for web references first, here are some useful ones I've found, in no particular order. (If you would like book recommendations, just ask. There are some excellent resources out there.)

Fashion-era.com has a bug-ugly interface but a vast amount of useful information. Start here:
http://www.fashion-era.com/1940s/index.htm

There's a little bit of good stuff at each of these:
http://www.marquise.de/en/themes/timeline/time7.shtml
http://vintagefashionguild.org/fashion-timeline/1940-to-1950/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945–1960_in_fashion

Sellers of vintage and reproduction sewing patterns have a lot of good images:
http://www.evadress.com/1940s_c_8.html
http://www.decadesofstyle.com/vintage-patterns-1940s
http://www.sovintagepatterns.com/1940ssewingpatterns.html
http://momspatterns.com/inc/searchresults?s=194* AND dress&ss=194* AND dress&n=436045

There are many interesting bloggers out there:
http://www.edelweisspatterns.com/blog/?p=2459
http://blog.beyondretro.com/2011/09/09/vintage-fashionthe-1940s/
http://www.swingfashionista.com/tag/1940s-fashion/
http://newsroom.nwfilm.org/2012/04/18/40th-anniversary-gala-preview-1940s-fashion-overview-part-one/
http://www.tweedmansvintage-blog.com/2012/04/1940s-mens-clothing.html (England, not the USA, but it is menswear, which is harder to find)
 

shakeysix

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my folks were married in 1948. there weren't any formal clothes available so dad wore a suit and tie. it looked kind of weird next to mom's all lace wedding dress with the extra long train. mom wore dad's marine dress pants when she was pregnant with me because they were the only warm thing that fit. she only wore them around the neighborhood. maternity clothes were boxy. they were meant to cover an embarrassing condition.

everything was wool in the winter so stuff smelled like mothballs until Christmastime. then they started smelling like dry cleaning chemicals. little girls wore leggings that buttoned--itchy as i remember. the winter stuff could get moth-eaten so had to be carefully packed away every spring in garment trunks and garment bags. then one blistering summer day mom would bring it up from the basement and my sibs and i would have to try all that wool stuff on--no A/C in those days. talk about misery! mom would sort out what fit and what had to be passed down to my cousins. my aunt was usually there so she could pass her kid's stuff to my little brother. they sometimes took that opportunity to give my girl cousins and my sister home permanents. Lilt was the brand name i think. little teeny pink curlers that hurt like an afternoon in hell. my hair was rabbit white, straight and so flimsy it broke off under the stress of the solution. straight hair didn't come in until the sixties so i was out of step with all the curly tops. my hair fit better under a ball cap though.

summer meant cotton. it was a sturdier fabric back then, but really wrinkled--lots of ironing; lots of starch. my mom and aunts wore pretty seersucker or light cotton sundresses and sandals on picnics. they always painted their toenails and finger nails to match their dresses. spent a lot of time on lipstick colors too. the house smelled like scorched cotton on ironing day.

people didn't bathe every day and they didn't wash an outfit every time they wore it. some people wore these white patches that they pinned under their arms. my mom thought they were old fashioned. when i stayed with my grandmother she wouldn't let me wash my hair every night because the old folks thought washing was bad for your hair. really old ladies wore dusters at home and long underwear called snuggies in the winter. it was not lady like to go anywhere in a dress and bare legs. and ladies wore garter belts or girdles. no panty hose. they usually wore their hose rolled over their kness. lots of varicose veins. even young women had them. no one walked or jogged.

men wore hats. there were little snap things in the pews at church for men to hang their hats. i used to play with them during mass but if it snapped loud enough for my folks to hear i caught a nasty look and a lecture after church. men only wore white, brown or black. no colors and only old spice was manly enough for real men. my grandpa had a pair of sandals that he wore with colored sox to do yard work. it was weird enough that i prayed my friends would never see him. grandpa was a bartender and a bouncer. he wore a bow tie. lots of men did back then. he had to wear a tie when he went to town, even if he went to the hardware store. my dad wore khakis and a white tee-shirt around the house. shirt and tie to work in his store. i never saw him in blue jeans or a colored shirt. no, he did wear hawaiian shirts to picnics. it was a big scandal if a lady wore slacks or jeans to the grocery store. people talked about it. girls wore dresses to school even in the dead of winter. brrr.

a lot more things were home made. minnie, my great grandmother, sewed clothes on a singer treadle machine. we still have it. she was born in 1884 and could not get the hang of an electric machine. . mom could point to a dress in the sears catalog and minnie could sew the dress without a store bought pattern. she cut her own pattern out of newspaper.

a lot of my memories are tied up with patterns and fabrics. i write about the forties and use vintage patterns to get my ideas. luckily my family never threw much out so i still have some old patterns but you can find others by going to mcalls or vogue and look through the archives--s6
 
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Cath

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There's no fashion links in the stick cuz they just weren't provided. Much as I'd love to I just don't have time to trawl the web for resources.

Alessandra and Trebor, can I copy your excellent resources into the sticky thread?
 

Puma

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You brought back a lot of memories, Shakeysix - I was born in '44, but the youngest of four children (by quite a few years). I remember (and have pictures) of my sister who was 17 when the war ended wearing short shorts and sweater type short-sleeved tops. She wore a lot of sweaters with skirts too. My brothers (13 and 15 when the war ended) wore jeans and colored T-shirts or flannel shirts, even to school (rural school). Mom had housedresses she wore for everyday, button up the front, frequently she'd made them. Dress up was more likely a button up the front dress or suit with a white blouse. Overall, colors were pretty drab for everyone except little kids. Dad was a college prof with his gray suit and always white shirt and blue striped or gray tie. At home he had gray work pants and wore just a white T-shirt with them in the summer and a flannel shirt over the T-shirt in the winter. He always wore a T-shirt undershirt under his white dress shirts.

Steam irons weren't really in yet so Mom would dampen the laundry, roll it, and put it in the refrigerator until she was ready to iron it. Wash day was once a week and with an old Maytag wringer washer it took all day. Laundry was hung from lines strung across the driveway to dry in the summer; in the winter the lines criss-crossed the dining room of our house.

A lot of everyone's clothes were homemade, although women's much more so than men. My aunts even made their own wool suits. And there weren't zippers in too many of the women's home-made outfits - everyone knew how to make buttonholes.

As far as pants go - I wore pants and shorts at home to play in, but pants were not allowed for girls all the way through school including college - and that even carried on after I entered the workforce. I think it was about 1968 when pants-suits for women came in; panty-hose were pretty close to the same time.

Fun remembering. Puma
 

Trebor1415

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Sure, you can copy my links. They are just from a 5 min Google search, but other's may find them useful as well. I doub't I'll ever post anything here that can't be freely used.
 

shakeysix

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i was in college the first time i saw panty hose. my mom bought me a couple of pair for christmas. my first thought?--these are going to be a bitch to get out of on a date. my late husband said about the same thing when he saw them. those were the days--s6
 

Alessandra Kelley

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There's no fashion links in the stick cuz they just weren't provided. Much as I'd love to I just don't have time to trawl the web for resources.

Alessandra and Trebor, can I copy your excellent resources into the sticky thread?

But of course. I have oodles of other links and references, but was limiting them to the 1940s as per the OP's request.

And I'm sorry I was rude about there not being clothing links.
 

Trebor1415

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i was in college the first time i saw panty hose. my mom bought me a couple of pair for christmas. my first thought?--these are going to be a bitch to get out of on a date. my late husband said about the same thing when he saw them. those were the days--s6

Ha! I love it.

(But, why was your husband wearing panty hose...?)
 

JohnnyGottaKeyboard

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And I'm sorry I was rude about there not being clothing links.
I wasn't trying to be rude either (I certainly appreciate all the links that ARE in the stickies). I just wanted to show that I had in fact checked the stickies before starting a thread. :D

Of course if I really wanted to show due diligence I would have posted the links I had already found in google in my OP. It would have been only fair. I learn something new I should have already known every day...!

Thanks to everyone for all the great info. My dad was born in '30 (and he passed away this year) so he had lots of memories and pics, but he was a poor southern boy and never went to a big city until he joined the army. I admit (confess) that I was pleased to hear about men wearing drab suits. I've been reading a lot of R. Chandler and R Stout, but y'know, Marlowe and Goodwin were pretty flashy dressers and my MC is supposed to be in mourning and I worried his reticent dark suits wouldn't be seen as realistic.
 
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shaldna

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I just wanted to say that, as a dress junkie, those links are all fab. thanks folks.
 

cbenoi1

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I remember the cream and crayon my grandmother used to tell me she used in lieu of stockings. Yes, she painted her legs for looks because cloth supplies ran low during the war. I think they called that 'stockings in a bottle' or something or another.

-cb
 

Alessandra Kelley

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If you're looking for books, a good place to start is Dover's Everyday Fashions of the Forties As Pictured in Sears Catalogs by JoAnne Olian. It's a Dover reprint, budget priced, and is very useful for midrange American fashions of the entire decade. Not only are garments for men, women, and children depicted, but they are described and their materials named. Its only drawback is it's in black-and-white.

Another excellent book (women's clothing only) is Forties Fashion: From Siren Suits to the New Look by Jonathan Walford. It focuses on the entire decade, wartime and after, in the US, France, Britain, Germany and elsewhere. I reviewed it on GoodReads here.

I've read these two and can vouch for their usefulness.
 

JohnnyGottaKeyboard

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If you're looking for books, a good place to start is Dover's Everyday Fashions of the Forties As Pictured in Sears Catalogs by JoAnne Olian. It's a Dover reprint, budget priced, and is very useful for midrange American fashions of the entire decade. Not only are garments for men, women, and children depicted, but they are described and their materials named. Its only drawback is it's in black-and-white.
thanks, i just added it to my Amazon Wishlist. I'm expecting a royalty check soon...But, who knows, I may get lucky!
 

shaldna

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I remember the cream and crayon my grandmother used to tell me she used in lieu of stockings. Yes, she painted her legs for looks because cloth supplies ran low during the war. I think they called that 'stockings in a bottle' or something or another.

-cb

That was fairly common - especially during rationing when stocking where scarce. You would 'paint' you legs with something to darken them - often gravy - and then draw a line up the back like the seam in stockings.

According to my granny (who was in the army during WW2) real stocking were a real luxury, and men who were trying to impress you would give you them as gifts. She still, to this day, calls them 'nylons'.
 

StephanieFox

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One word:
Chanel.

A second word:
1968 and blue jeans
 

StephanieFox

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That was fairly common - especially during rationing when stocking where scarce. You would 'paint' you legs with something to darken them - often gravy - and then draw a line up the back like the seam in stockings.

According to my granny (who was in the army during WW2) real stocking were a real luxury, and men who were trying to impress you would give you them as gifts. She still, to this day, calls them 'nylons'.



There was makeup specifically made for legs. This made a short comeback in the 1960s. Women used an eyebrow pencil to draw the seam.
 

JohnnyGottaKeyboard

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While we're on women's legs...

Does anyone know (AK?) whether there existed something along the lines of Capri pants/pedal pushers in the mid 40s? Wikipedia claims they were popular in the 50s and introduced in 1948. My story takes place in 47!!! There must have been something sporty young women wore to the beach.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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In the Sears catalogues, it's clear that wearing blue jeans rolled up to mid-calf length was not uncommon for girls riding bicycles or otherwise playing actively. Or, as in that photograph, women working. They were full-length, somewhat loose-fitting jeans, just with the cuffs turned up.

It's not the strangest thing to wear to the beach, although I gather what was more common was lightweight, very wide-legged pants, what my grandmother used to call "beach pajamas.". They were seen as sporty and somewhat nautical, often worn with a sleeveless blouse with a little scarf or sailor's collar.
 

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I sell vintage clothes for a living, so this is right up my alley.

One thing that's important to remember is that there was a huge and fairly abrupt change in women's fashions with the introduction of the New Look. The silhouette went from being broad-shouldered and fairly slim in the skirt to slope-shouldered and so full-skirted that many desingers sent their models down the runway wearing hip padding. Waists also got narrower. Clothes actually got a lot more physically restrictive-- try lifting your arms in a 40s dress vs a 50s dress! This was part of an emphasis on femininity that pushed women out of the roles they'd filled during the war and back into the home.