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.
Pre-New Look experiments in dresses – An interesting image from 1942 Vogue, specifically the skirt on the left. Very Christian Dior, some five years before the advent of his Corolle collection. There’s a new look at night ( here in translucent black). The dress is short – the cut and the fabric formal. Made more …
1940s fashion in magical Kodachrome color – There is an era captured in photography which engenders more nostalgia perhaps than any other in the 20th century and these are the Kodachrome years. Kodachrome film was a 35 mm film or transparency containing three layers producing the primary colors. Like their black and white counterparts, the …
Instant lip glamour in 1949 – From Hollywood comes a sensational new method of lipstick make-up for screen and stage stars, photographers’s models and for your own personal use – Glamour Lips! One of the most difficult make-up problems is made amazingly simple with the Glamour Lips lipstick applicator. This new technique gives you a …
The feminine knee is returned to prim seclusion by Paris – The liveliest argument has raged since February over this years major style change, which returns via Paris decree, a woman’s knee to beneath her skirt. There are naturally many who are not pleased about the dipping hemlines 1947, while there are other young women who …
Profile of a French actress in 1946 – A revealing social document in pictures by Nina Leen of bohemian life in Paris immediately after the Second World War. She is blue-eyed, ash-blonde Barbara Laage, aged 25, an up-and-coming young French actress, enjoying the biggest theater boom Paris has ever know. During the past season, 50 …
Vogue Magazine introduces Dior’s New Look – This was Europe’s worst winter since 1870. There was little coal, electricity was rationed and Paris was buried in snow. With fingers stiff, but with ideas running free, designers worked against the cold toward exciting new ideas.Perhaps nowhere but in Paris would the rise of a new designing star …
Typical Wardrobe choice in 1949 – 1940s fashion Photos by Nina Leen Not all young college girls are content with thee gold standard college look of bobby socks, skirts and loose sweaters.Many, influenced by older sisters, friends or simply an urge to grow up quickly, aspire to more mature clothes, thereby facing a double wardrobe …
Longer Skirts on the way 1946 – Usually the sign of a depression? An uneven hemline with a back slip, is clearly a sneaky device to trick women into longer skirts. This device was last used in 1927. Skirts had gone knee high in the flapper era. Soon they began to dip in the back. …
Poignant farewells in 1940s wartime – A moment in time captured by Life Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt ( best remembered for his iconic Vj day kiss in Times Square in 1945) at Pennsylvania Station, New York,in April 1943.Here is the original report. The grey, insistent feeling of war has washed now into the lives of most …
Leave her to Heaven 1945 – John Stahl’s classic noir movie Leave her to Heaven, stars possibly the best dressed ever femme fatale – Gene Tierney. It was recently restored with the help of director Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and has been rightly claimed as a forgotten masterpiece. It’s a feast for fans of 1940s clothing, …