Fashion during 1940's ww2

Fashion of the 1940's during World War 2, for men and for women. From the start of ww2 women's dresses were knee--length and featured padded shoulders. The clothing was simple due to the rationing of material. Women wore curls and bright lipstick to emphasise the feminine look. When the war was over and the material was available again the 'New Look' was born. Christian Dior created the New Look, this featured a nipped in waist, longer lengths and fuller skirts. Also during the ww2 period the government encouraged the 'make do and mend' policy, which basically means recycle and re-use garments. 

Women converted mens suits into women's suits, because men were away in the forces. Heavy blankets were converted into overcoats. Jumpers made from wool were unwoven and knitted into something else. With make do and mend women stopped wearing skirts unless they were re-made. Women started wearing trousers and dungarees as well. 

During the ware men generally wore plain solid colour suits. Either navy or black with white shirts. When the men weren't wearing their army caps, they wore their wide brimmed fedora. A smart strong, stylish hat worn mostly by businessman.

For this project I constructed a 1940's style dress for an everyday women, I also constructed an apron to go with the dress. I made the dress in pale pink gingam (checkered material) with a wrap around belt. The apron I kept simple with cream cotton and one pocket on the lower half. The apron was quite easy to make as was the dress because they were simple designs, you had to keepin mind that material was limited in 1940 due to rationing. The budget we had for the apron and dress was £5.00 each, I went slightly over the budget because in modern day material is more exspensive.

WW2 Dress

Also for this I had to create samples this included patchwork, recycled materials sewn together, weave, batik (done with hot wax), knitting, prints, and I took a photo of each of these to improve my presentation.

Patchwork sample

Knitting sample

This was another sample I did, for this get an image and some fabric or an item of clothing, place the image down on a flat surface facing up and cover with glue, not too thick but be generous, then place the fabric over the image, press down with a rolling pin firmly, then peel the whole thing off the surface and leave to dry. Once dry dampen the image with warm water and peel off the paper from the fabric,the image you started out with should then be imprinted onto the fabric.

WW2 Project (Chosen Poem)

Perhaps (To R.A.L) by Vera Brittain


Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of you.

Perahps the golden meadows at my feet
Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
Though you have passed away.

Perhaps the summer woods shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest feilds a rich delight,
Although you are not there.

Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain,
To see the passing of the dying year,
And listen to christmas songs again,
Although you cannot hear.

But though kind time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know,
Again, becasue my heart for loss of you,
Was broken, long ago.


For this we had to choose a poem and create a character and a story for that poem. For my final garment I had to create an apron and a 1940's dress, but both of these had to be related to the character.

Egyptian Dress

Last Mock FMP, I had the choice for this project but I wanted to choose something that had many different parts to it, interesting research and different styles.


I chose Egyptian because I have always been interested int the culture, and I made a dress egyptian style.

To get to this finished garment I produced 10 designs, trying to stick to the egyptian style and the egyptian colours. I knew I deffinatly wanted to make a long to the floor dress to symbolise an egyptian queen.

From these designs I created samples to go with my work, these are some of my best ones, knitting the knit shown was difficult to do becasue of the alternating colours. The batik was easy I have knitted over the wax as well, to give it something extra.

 Batik sample, machine stitched back over following the lines, very difficult but I liked the result.

Pattern dress

I chose to do gift boxes and perfume bottles, simply because you can get so many different and unusual shapes of both gift boxes and perfume bottles. For this project I had to create a design and put it on a garment using a printing method. I chose to do a Lino print, printed it onto white silky fabric and created a skirt using purple velvet as a lining and a belt.

In the design I did one perfume bottle, It was the perfume 'Angel' and one gift box which was a 'Pink' gift box.

I used a lino board print to do this and create the skirt. Some of the drawings for the patterna dn print project. I enjoyed doing the drawings for this project, becasue I could lots of different medias,and the drawings I did were interesting onesof perfume bottles and gift boxes.

Sweet Wrapper Dress

Yummy project, for this project I had to buy about 5 big bags of sweets, purely because I needed the wrappers for my dress. This was for the recycle project, I started by looking at what types of materials can be recycled. I decided on sweet wrappers because you can get so many different types, and colours. I started out by making the basic dress, then sewing the sweet wrappers together, then sewing them onto the dress. It was very challenging, because when there are that many sweet wrappers together it becomes very hard not to rip them.

It took s lot of designs to get to this final dress. This dress took 4 huge bags of sweets, only using the wrappers,and creating a colour wheel effect all the way down the dress, using silver to fill in the gaps and running down the sides to hide the seams.

Waterfall dress

This was for the organic project, I looked closely at waterfalls, the structure, the movement, and the colouring of the waterfalls. Especially in my fashion illustrations I chose the main colours of a waterfall, which are shades of blue, green and browns.

Designs

In my samples for this project I also tried to stick to the same few colours of a waterfall, I did a weave, felt, wire manipulation, fabric manipulation, I also put a mini sample of different fabrics next to each illustration to give an idea of what I would make the garment out of and how I would do it.


I went on a trip myself to Swallow Falls in Wales, it was a very long journey and a very cold day, especially when we took a wrong turn and started travelling up to Snowdonia. During this I took photos for observational drawings and some just for my sketchbook. I also recorded a video of the waterfall in motion, to see how it moves and how that can inspire me for my fashion designs.