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Abstract
The War Production Board issued limitation order 85 in April 1942 in order to conserve fabric and manpower needed for the war effort. The United States government hoped to curb, at least temporarily, the purchase of apparel and other goods to help support the war effort by restricting materials needed for the war. However, the apparel industry was one of the leading consumer industries in the United States, and putting it on hold was not only impractical but could harm the domestic economy. The United States apparel industry even marketed goods as patriotic to stimulate, not curb, consumer spending. The purpose of this research was to examine how female consumers of women’s apparel were influenced by the federal regulations of women’s apparel during World War II. We also examined extant wartime apparel in order to provide a more complete picture of women’s wartime apparel styles.
Notes
1 Vogue, May 1, 1942, 41.
2 Jane Farrell-Beck and Jean Parsons, 20th-Century Dress in the United States (New York: Fairchild Publications, 2007), 124; Shirley Miles O’Donnol, American Costume, 1915–1970 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 126.
3 Farrell-Beck and Parsons, 20th-Century Dress, 124; Phyllis Tortora and Keith Eubank, Survey of Historic Costume, 3rd ed. (New York: Fairchild Publications, 1998), 398.
4 According to Vogue’s editor, the fashion industry was one of the leading industries in the country in the early 1940s. Vogue, January 1, 1941, 27.
5 Sandra Stansbery Buckland, “Fashion as a Tool of World War II: A Case Study Supporting the SI Theory,” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal (2000) 1, no. 3: 144.
6 Stanley Marcus, Minding the Store: A Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), 115–116.
7 Ibid.
8 According to one writer at Women’s Wear Daily, “We predict that the influence of this order will…achieve a new and patriotic cooperation between buyer and manufacturer, between retailer and customer.” Quoted in Marcus, Minding the Store, 115–116.
9 Jonathan Walford, Forties Fashion: From Siren Suits to the New Look (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008), 67; Women’s Wear Daily, April 8, 1942: Section 1, p. 1.
10 “General Limitation Order L-85,” Women’s Wear Daily, April 8, 1942: section 2. Similar to today, there must have been consumers who were not knowledgeable about fibers. However, our respondents were aware of many of the characteristics of wool, silk, cotton, flax/linen, and rayon.
11 Winifred J. Ovitee, “Industry Owes Appreciation for Fashion Understanding In Rulings of Order L-85,” Women’s Wear Daily, April 8, 1942: section 1, p. 3.
12 Nona Baldwin, “Says Design Gains By Dress Limiting,” The New York Times, August 15, 1942, 7.
13 Winifred Spear, “Dress Designers Surpass the WPB in Effecting Savings in Material,” The New York Times, March 27, 1943, 10.
14 S. S. Buckland, “Promoting American Fashion 1940 Through 1945: From Understudy to Star” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1996), 173.
15 Valerie Mendes and Amy de la Haye, 20th Century Fashion (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999), 119.
16 Ida Juul, “Educational Narratives: Educational History Seen From a Micro-Perspective,” Paedagogica Historica 44, no. 6 (2008): 707.
17 After we received IRB approval from Oregon State University, the first author conducted semi-structured interviews in the participants’ homes.
18 For example, did women read Vogue or other fashion periodicals? How often did they go shopping or browse new apparel styles?
19 Many respondents shared photographs. Many of the photographs had written dates and location information on the back. Only three participants kept and could locate extant wartime garments. But, despite the possibility of memory loss, we are confident that the garments they shared were in fact from the period of study because of their comments regarding the garments. Respondents recalled where they wore, or, in Beverly’s case, where her mother wore, the garments. The garment styles also matched descriptions of WWII era garments.
20 Most of the women in the “other” group had experiences similar to the other women but did not fit neatly into the other three categories. For example, one woman obtained her bachelor’s degree at the start of the war and then went to graduate school. One woman did not fit into the other three categories; she was divorced at the start of the war, had been working as a timber grader on the Northern California coast, and then joined the military and was in Europe during the war.
21 All names have been changed to protect the anonymity of the women. Marcia was seventeen years old when the war started in 1941. Marcia lived in Polson, Montana, with her parents; she was married in 1942 but stayed with her parents until she graduated from high school. After graduating, she went to Seattle where her husband was working at Boeing. The couple then moved to Tacoma, Washington, where her husband took “a better job…at the shipyard.” Her husband then went into the army, and she moved to Idaho where he went to boot camp until he went to war in fall 1943. By this time Marcia was raising a child and decided to return to her parents’ home in Montana.
22 Virginia was eighteen years old when the war started in 1941. Virginia’s father owned a wheat and cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon. Virginia married during this time and spent time in Enterprise, Alabama, where her husband was stationed before being sent overseas.
23 Buckland, “Promoting American Fashion,” 191.
24 Charles F. Bergs was an apparel boutique store in Portland, Oregon.
25 “Store Shows ‘War’ Clothes,” Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), August 21, 1942: Section 2: 6. For a discussion of fashion shows in New York, see also Sandra S. Buckland, “Promoting American Designers, 1940–44: Building Our Own House,” in Twentieth-Century American Fashion, ed. Linda Welters and Patricia A. Cunningham (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 117.
26 “‘Miss Average College Girl’, 1941,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, accessed June 10, 2011, http://chronicle.com/blogs/tweed/ miss-average-college-girl-1941/21010. The original Design for Living: The Magazine for Young Moderns could not be obtained for examination.
27 Maternity clothing was not affected by L-85.
28 The use of leg makeup was mentioned in fashion magazines: “But this Summer You’ll Try Leg Makeup. Because you Want to Save your Precious Stockings”; “Leg Make-Up: How to Give Yourself a Good Tanning,” Glamour (July 1942), 17.
29 Eleven casual everyday dresses; seven suits; four dresses for dressy occasions; three blouses; two jackets; two sweaters; two coats; one swimsuit; one pair of overalls; one pinafore; and one three-piece ensemble were examined.
30 Even with the use of primary and secondary sources and a third expert, there is still a possibility that some of the garments may not be wartime styles.
31 We examined a Jantzen sweater; an Eisenberg & Sons evening dress; a day dress with a “Betty Baxley Frocks” label; a jacket with a “Barbara Page Originals” label; a “Tailored Lass” suit; an “Astor of Philadelphia” suit; a suit with matching coat by “Fashionbilt [sic] The Well Made Garment”; and a “Judy Bond” blouse. We also examined a dress with a Nettie Rosenstein label and a Louise Barnes Gallagher suit; the Gallagher suit also had a retailer label from Nicholas Ungar’s, a Portland, Oregon, boutique. A jacket with a Meier & Frank label was also examined. Meier & Frank was an Oregon department store.
32 Nona Baldwin, “Says Design Gains By Dress Limiting,” The New York Times, August 15, 1942, 7.
33 Length and sweep requirements varied by size: Misses’ sizes were listed in 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20. For misses’ size 10 day dresses could have a length up to 41 inches and a sweep (other than wool fabric) of 74 inches; misses’ size 14 day dresses could have a length up to 42½ inches and a sweep (other than wool fabric) of 76½ inches; misses’ size 20 day dresses could have a length up to 44 inches and a sweep (other than wool fabric) of 81 inches. “Fashions for Victory: General Limitation Order L-85,” Women’s Wear Daily, April 8, 1942.
34 F. W. Walton, Thread of Victory (New York: Fairchild Publishing Co., 1945), 265. In Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style, Kathy Peiss discusses the sale of zoot suits, a men’s wartime style considered unpatriotic due to the excessive fabric used to produce the style. Peiss explains that retailers caught selling the zoot suit “would be prosecuted and punished with a fine of $10,000 and a year in prison.” However, the regulations were difficult to enforce and the sale of zoot suits continued. Kathy Peiss, Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 38.
35 Nan Turner also discusses respondents and their reuse of fabric during World War II. “Valerie F. (American, born 1922) told me about her mother shortening a skirt and using the fabric cut from the hem as an insert at the front to create panels and enlarge the skirt that had become too small.” Nan Turner, “Deprivation Fashion,” DUCK: Journal for Research in Textiles and Textile Design (2011) 12, no. 2: 14.
36 Women’s Wear Daily, April 8, 1942.
37 Though this garment had a WWII silhouette and style characteristics, it is possible that the garment pre-dates December 1941, or it was manufactured early in the war when inventories of decorative metal trims were still available. “Dresses embellished with decorative gold, brass or silver nail heads first appeared in the late 1930s. Usually seen on solid-color ‘background’ dresses of wool or synthetic crepe, nail heads were used as glittering accents on bodice, sleeves, belt, collar, pocket or cuffs….Typical placement usually focused on the neckline and upper bodice, though print advertisements indicate that nail heads were placed anywhere and everywhere.” “Nail head dresses,” FIDM Museum Blog, May 20, 2010, http://blog.fidmmuseum.org/museum/2010/05/nail-head-dresses.html.
38 “Old ‘zippers’ were reclaimed” from older garments. Walton, Thread of Victory, 139.
39 “Lighter and shorter zippers were made in order to stretch available metal supplies.” In addition, manufacturers began experimenting with alternative materials like plastic with some success. Robert Fridel, Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1994), 200.
40 A yellow nylon sweater and a nylon fleece coat were advertised for sale in Vogue by retailers Arnold Constable and Saks Fifth Avenue. Vogue, August 15, 1942, 48, 107.
41 Walton, Thread of Victory, 76.
42 O’Donnol, American Costume, 114.
43 The L-85 order was announced over the radio and published in newspapers and in magazines like Time and Vogue. Walton, The Thread of Victory, 11, 35, 81,106; “New War Fashions Replace Old Patterns; Restrictions Placed on Materials,” Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), April 9, 1942; Time, April 20, 1942, 17; Vogue, May 1, 1942, 41.
44 O’Donnol, American Costume, 114.
45 Rosemary was twenty years old when the war started in 1941. Rosemary lived in Portland, Oregon, with her parents. She went to Oregon State College and received a degree in home economics in 1943. The first summer after graduation Rosemary worked “for the Navy in their dispersing office…in Portland at Swan Island.” Rosemary married later that year and traveled with her husband across the country for Navy training. The couple lived in Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, Rhode Island, and California. After her husband went overseas, Rosemary returned to her parents’ house in Portland where she had a baby.
46 There were eight former home economics majors. Three of these women explained that they received a BS in Home Economics Education, meaning that they took courses in home management, nutrition, and sewing. However, Rita, a former chemistry major, sewed more frequently than did any of the former home economics majors.
47 Walton, Thread of Victory, 115.
48 The fabric made from protein fibers found in skim milk is a type of azlon fiber, a “generic term for fibers composed of regenerated proteins derived from such natural substances as peanuts, corn and milk.” Specifically casein fibers are “regenerated protein fibers produced by precipitating casein from skim milk and dissolving it in an alkaline solution, which is then aged and spun through spinnerets into an acid bath.” Isabel B. Wingate, Fairchild’s Dictionary of Textiles, 6th ed. (New York: Fairchild Publications, 1979), 35, 109.
49 Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 212.
50 “Miss Average College Girl,” 1941, The Chronicle of Higher Education, accessed February 2, 2010, http://chronicle.com/blogs/tweed/ miss-average-college-girl-1941/21010.
51 Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), October 18, 1942, 7.
52 Collars exceeding five inches in width were prohibited under the order. The back of sailor collars are often wider than five inches. Walton, Thread of Victory, 266.
53 Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), January 3, 1943, 4.
54 According to museum records, the extant dress is the same dress worn in the photograph. While the owner/wearer is the same, we believe that the dresses are not the same dress because the motifs in the pattern of the dress in the photo appear to be larger and the sleeve styles do not appear to be the same.
55 Walton, The Thread of Victory, 11, 35, 81, 106. On April 9, 1942, the day after WWD published the limitation order, the Oregonian ran a brief article titled “New War Fashions Replace Old Patterns; Restrictions Placed on Materials,” Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), April 9, 1942.
56 Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), April 26, 1942.
57 Walton, The Thread of Victory, 78–79.
58 “Wartime Living: In the Stretch,” Time, April 20, 1942, 17.
59 Farrell-Beck and Parsons, 20th-Century dress in the United States, 124.
60 Buckland, “Promoting American Fashion,” 173.
61 Sarah B. Marketti and Jean L. Parsons, “American Fashions for American Women: Early Twentieth Century Efforts to Develop an American Fashion Identity,” Dress 34 (2007): 79.
62 For more information, see Sheryl Farnan Leipzig, Jean L. Parsons and Jane Farrell-Beck, “It is a Profession that is New, Unlimited, and Rich: Promotion of the American Designer in the 1930s,” Dress 35 (2008–2009): 29–47.
63 “Norman Norell, Nettie Rosenstein, Jo Copeland, Adele Simpson, Claire McCardell, Mollie Parnis, and Hannah Troy to mention only a few…of the outstanding designers who have cooperated so generously in this plan.” Spear, “Dress Designers Surpass the WPB,” 10.
64 “Store Shows ‘War’ Clothes,” Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), August 21, 1942, Section 2: 6; Buckland, “Promoting American Designers, 1940–44,” 117.
65 Buckland, “Promoting American Fashion,” 170.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jennifer M. Mower
Jennifer M. Mower teaches Retail Management in the College of Business and Contemporary History of Fashion in the School of Design and Human Environment, Oregon State University. Her research interests include historic consum er behavior related to the consumption of apparel.
Elaine L. Pedersen
Elaine L. Pedersen is an Associate Professor in the School of Design and Human Environment, Oregon State University. Her scholarly interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century Euro-American dress and theory development.