Pedal Pushers (Life, August 28, 1944)

 If women in some countries were repurposing old zips to make jewellry, and old curtains to make aprons, women in other countries had enough resources to pursue the occasional fashion whimsy.  I'm referring here to "pedal pushers", which first appeared on the cover of Life in 1944 as a youthful fad.

"PEDAL PUSHERS"

This fall college girls will wear a new kind of knee-length shorts

For years male bicyclists have had the sensible custom of rolling up the right trouser leg to avoid tangling with the chain.  When college girls took to riding bicycles in slacks, they first rolled up one trouser leg, then rolled up both.  This whimsy has now produced a trim variety of long shorts, called "pedal pushers".  Introduced at recent college fashion shows, they look like little boys' short pants.

Best footwear with pedal pushers are moccasins.  Since these are rationed, girls this summer have been going barefoot (see cover) and they are expected to appear on campuses this fall in bare feet.  But bare feet are not allowed in class.  In some places pedal pushers themselves will not be allowed in classrooms.

Most Eastern colleges will permit girls to were pedal pushers on the campus.  Some of them (Smith, Vassar, Mount Holyoke, Sarah Lawrence) will also permit them to go to classes.  California colleges will have none of them either in class or on campus.  The University of Kansas begs the question by saying that these knee-length shorts are permissible "if they look enough like a skirt to fool a nearsighted professor."

In some ways these garments seem the epitome of wartime praticality and economy: practical because they made riding a bicycle easier, and economic because they didn't use much material.  It's clear that some conservatives in the older generation didn't approve of them, but that probably made them all the more appealing to the girls who wore them!

Pedal pushers would go on to be a post-war staple in American casual wear.  Once they moved from campuses to the suburbs they'd change slightly in design, becoming a little bit longer and a lot slimmer.  I wonder how many of the young students mentioned in the article above continued wearing pedal pushers as adults?

On Making Do (Stitchcraft 1943)

 Every country caught up in the Second World War was affected by civilian shortages, but some countries were more affected than others.  These magazines, published in Great Britain, are full of tips and projects for making the most of a limited clothing ration.

Knitting, as always, was a popular pastime.  Since it was important to use as little yarn as possible, designers started creating patterns for tight, waist-length jumpers in stitches that saved wool.  Multi-coloured patterns (as in the hat and gloves below) became popular as a way of using up odds and ends.  If all else failed, knitters could always unravel an old garment, and use the wool to knit something new!

Now on to the magazines.

January 1943

The cover shows a ribbed jumper with a camels in cross stich on the yoke.  Other contents include patterns for detachable collars made of wool (only half an ounce of wool for each!) , a pattern for an apron to make out of old blackout curtain, and a pattern for "sockettes" to be worn to save one's precious stockings.

Wakes, Winter 1942

Japan entered the war in 1942, and for the first time Australia had the enemy on their doorstep.  However, Australian manufacturers were still capable of turning out stylish outfits like the coat and muff (with matching hat) illustrated on the cover of the catalogue below.

COAT AND MUFF, 5 GNS.

A three piece ensemble (the hat sells separately) with furrier-made tawny luxurious leopard-dyed coney fur, mounted on a brilliant Loyal Blue English all wool coating.  Seven panel, slim as a whistle princess with new lines in every inch from moulded, semi-extended, immaculate shoulders to flared full hem.  British rayon lined throughout.  Matched skins and material in the zip closing muff purse.

Australia's Lost Department Stores IX: McDowells (Spring & Summer 1941-42)

McDowells was one of Sydney's smaller department stores, and like so many others, began as a drapery in the 19th century.  It was founded as John McDowell and Partners in 1889, and became McDowell and Coogan in 1893 when one of the original partners dropped out.  In 1895 it became McDowell and Hughes, when Hughes bought out Coogan, finally becoming McDowells Ltd in 1917.  

McDowells prided itself of old-fashioned service and providing value for money.  Staff often spent their whole careers there, and discipline was considered to be firm, but fair.  (That didn't stop one enterprising manager stealing 70 dozen pairs of stockings from his employer in the early 1920s!)  Notably, McDowells refused to reduce the pay of its employees during the Great Depression.

McDowells did a lot of business via mail-order catalogue, which brings me to this publication from 1941.

The front cover hopes "for a brighter year!" but history tells us that they would be disappointed.  Meanwhile they were advertising a "FROCK you will love to wear to any function" in "SHEER GEORGETTE", a "FLORAL FROCK" in crepe with a silhouette "emphasised by the drama of a WHIRL OF PLEATS", a "WASHING FROCK attractively styled in ... a good quality LINEN LIKE FABRIC" and lastly, a dress cut with "9 complete Gores" in a "Flower-splashed distinctive SUEDE CREPE".

It's a fairly good selection of early wartime fashions, but as wartime economies bit clothes would become less generous in their use of materials.  Tucks, pleats and 9-gored skirts would no longer be allowed.

Vogue Pattern Book (June 1940)

 War or no war, Vogue Patterns was still capable of producing glamorous and sophisticated patterns.  Illustrated on the cover of the June 1940 Vogue Pattern Book is pattern S-4189 for a skirt, a blouse and a jacket.

S-4189——RIDING HABIT JACKETS will make your town suit look crisply English and pay homage to the flared-hip silhouette above a slim skirt.

Suits and separates would remain staples during the war years, though as time went on the cut of this jacket would be seen as wasteful.

This is the British edition of Vogue Pattern Book.  It would have gone to press around the time of Dunkirk, and subsequent issues during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.  Though the patterns would have been the same as the ones in the American edition, the war crept in via the editorial content.  This issue warns readers of possible fabric shortages as British manufactures are exported to pay for the war effort. The October issue warns readers of a possible purchase tax on paper patterns (a tax had been imposed on clothes that month) while the December issue exhorts them to be economical.

Eventually, due to paper shortages, the British edition of Vogue Pattern Book would cease publication as a separate magazine, and would not resume until some years after the war.

"What the Parisienne is Wearing" (Woman's Journal, May 1939)

 I'm going to have one last fling with the frivolities of Haute Couture, before I settle down to the years of austerity, rationing and "make do and mend".  And it seems that the designers of 1939 were also having a last fling in the shadow of war.  Moma Clarke wrote in the May issue of Woman's Journal:

All the Paris dressmakers have "gone" womanly in the most feminine sense of the word... Schiaparelli announces that "women are ladies again".  One dares not reflect on the interim.  Better not...

It's one of the minor what-ifs of history: if there had been no Second World War, would fashion have given us a "New Look" a decade earlier than it did?

On to the designers—and we have some familiar names at this point.

Summer fashion plans have turned topsey-turvey. Instead of a plain suit with a figured blouse it is the other way about, and a gaily flowered tailor-made is the order of the going.  Jean Patou makes this delectable suit of brown and white figured crêpe with a white crêpe blouse, and the blue flowered ensemble of glazed cotton with a white piqué waistcoat.  Never have pastel shades been so loved.  A dress and coat matching in a pastel coloured crêpe is as chic as anything can be—especially when trimmed with scalloping, as in this lovely pastel blue dress and coat by Patou.

Patou died in 1936, but the house he founded lived on.  I have no information on who actually designed these dresses. 

New Fashions For You and Your Home (Singer, Fall-Winter 1938)

 Shown below is part of Vogue Pattern No. 8129, an evening dress "with a redingote over an independent slip-dress".  This is clearly the "slip dress"part of the design.  A small illustration of the "redingote", made up in lace, is inside the magazine.

Back in my very first post for this year I mentioned the introduction of the first backless evening dresses during World War I.  In they 1930s they were almost de rigueur in formal evening gowns, though they could be covered up by garments like the redingote included with this pattern.

All in all, there seems to have been quite a variety in evening fashions in 1938!  The Australian Home Journal reports:

In the evening we see princess dresses with drapings that stress the wearer's slenderness; further, there come dresses which cling till the knees and then start into greater width; some skirts are slit and somewhat cut away in front, trailing at the back in a line, and there are also reminiscences of the Empire, the Directoire and the 1889 style.

Australian Home Journal, May 1938