The Fashion of World War One
During and after the First World War, fashion in Europe and North America changed drastically. Before World War One, women in western Europe and North America usually wore ankle-length dresses with cinched waists and many belts, ties, and other details. Men generally wore three-piece suits, wide-brimmed hats, and dress shoes. The biggest fashion shifts due to the war happened to women. Dresses rose to just below the knee, and gained boxier, more masculine silhouettes. This happened for a variety of reasons.
- Work
During the war, most able-bodied men of a working age had been enlisted. Due to this, there were many job spots to fill, and the only people who could fill them were women. Before the war, the main job that a women could have been was a servant. Now, women were taking on any number of jobs- many of them involving heavy lifting and machinery. The form-fitting, near floor-length gowns from before the war were not safe or comfortable for these jobs, so many women took to wearing pants or short, shapeless dresses. Many women appreciated the new financial and social securities that came with their careers, and decided to keep working after the war, so they needed to keep wearing loose, comfortable outfits.
2. Rations
Like with the Second World War, World War One had many rations. Most factories had been acquired to manufacture weapons, and there was little trading of non-war related resources between countries, so there weren’t enough resources to go around. Clothing, of course, was hit with strict rations. There wasn’t enough fabric to make the longer dresses of previous decades, so dress lengths began to rise. The rations continued for a while after the war, and so the trend of shorter dresses continued.
3. Athletics
During the war, only 36% of men within the age-range of enlistment were deemed fit enough to join the army. After the war, people became concerned about health and fitness. Suddenly, exercise was popular, and the modern woman require a stylish, practical outfit to wear while she exercised. Sportswear became stylish, and many brands created lines of swim wear and athletic wear. With the rise of athletics came a change in beauty standards for women. Before, the hourglass figure- fitting with the cinched-waist style of the previous decade- had been the beauty ideal. Now, women were expected to have a more masculine, stick-thin body. With this new body came a new silhouette- dresses became lose and boxy. The waist-cinching corset of the 1910s was replaced a wide corset that would remove any curves from a women’s figure. For similar reasons, tans became stylish as well. Before, pale skin was a sign that a person could afford to not have a job labouring outside. They could work inside, in business or administration, or even not work at all. In the 1920s, however, tans became a sign of health and therefore beauty. If you had a tan, you were spending time outdoors, exercising and staying healthy.
4. Dancing
The 1920s were a time of celebration. The “war to end all wars” was over, wealth was abundant, and inventions were numerous. In this celebratory time, dancing and partying became more popular, especially foreign dances like the tango, which were more upbeat than many of the dances popular to previous generations in North America and Europe. These upbeat dances could not be done in the restrictive clothes from before the war. When a woman was partying, she had to wear loose, comfortable dresses.
5. Feminist Movements
With the 1920s came the suffragette movement. The “flapper dress” of the 1920s was associated with rebellion and the younger generation, so it of course became connected with the suffragettes. The flapper dress had more physical freedom than other dresses, so it symbolized the political freedom that women were fighting for.
For the first time, nearly everyone could afford to be fashionable. The loose, boxy dresses of the time were far easier to make buy hand than previous styles. Even the unexperienced seamstress could manage a fashionable dress. Along with this, ready-to-wear clothes and department stores were becoming popular, so you no longer had to enlist a tailor in order to get a new dress. Buying a dress was cheaper than even before, and buying a dress pattern and sewing the dress yourself was even cheaper. Because of how accessible fashion had become, wearing the latest styles was no longer viewed as something shallow or selfish that only the wealthy could afford to care about. In fact, if you sewed your own dress, being fashionable was economical. Fashion was more universal than ever before.
Sources:
1920s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook by Charlotte Fiell
https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1920-1929/
1920s advertisements for simple house dresses aimed at middle- to lower-class women
