Hems had been rising steadily since the beginning of the 1910s. At first they only revealed the tips of the wearer's shoes, then they stealthily rose to her insteps, before clearing her ankles around the start of the First World War. Here, just shy of eighteen months into the War they have risen to around the bottom of the wearer's calves—much to the shock of older and more conservative members of society!
This cover also illustrates, right at the end of 1915, an early version of the "war crinoline". Unlike Victorian crinolines, these wide skirts weren't supported by a wire under-structure. They remained fashionable through 1916 and most of 1917, before deflating towards the end of the war.
If these costumes look rather plainer than the fashions of 1910, it was because war shortages were starting to bite. The editors of La Mode comment:
"La difficulté des approvisionnements on étoffes, passmenteries, dentelles impose forcemént des limites a l'imagination de nos grandes faiseuses."
["The difficulty of supplying fabrics, trimmings, lace, necessarily imposes limits on the imagination of our great creators." ]
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