How women’s heroism on the home front boosted their fight for freedom

IN the middle of the commemorations of the First World War centenary there is no shortage of arts and cultural events celebrating the lives of the 750,000 British men who lost their lives in one of the deadliest conflicts in human history.

Celebrated less are the women who stayed on the home front who kept the country ticking over – and Britain’s military efforts strong – by moving into the workforce while continuing to carry out domestic duties and childcare.

Before 1914 the women’s movement had reached its most extreme – employing military tactics, mimicked from Russian exiles, such as arson – leading to their imprisonment and gruelling hunger strikes.

But a more mainstream faction under Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst saw war as an opportunity for women to prove their capabilities and by its end, in 1918, they had turned public opinion in their favour and were granted the right to vote.

“As horrific and dreadful as the war was it was a really positive time for women,” said Darrell Vydelingum, creative director of Fashion and Freedom – a new exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery showing how the freedoms that war afforded women were reflected in changes in women’s dress.

“Women’s attitudes changed, then society, the government, the media followed.”

By 1918 one million women worked in munitions, their children in 100 new nurseries part funded by government.

The number of women working in transport rose sharply to 50,000, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps allowed 100,000 women to join the armed forces and the Women Patrols – the first female police officers – emerged.

“There’s a great story about the women who started in the London Metropolitan Police,” said Vydelingum,

“They didn’t have uniforms but one of them had an account at Harrods, so the first suit for a female police officer was made there, but it wasn’t female tailoring.”

The necessity for women to wear practical clothing resulted in its becoming fashionable and, shortly after the war, the first female suit for fashion’s sake was created by Coco Chanel.

But it wasn’t just female tailoring that wartime fashion gave rise to – waistlines loosened and hemlines and hair length shortened.

The shifts in fashion are interpreted by designers including Vivienne Westwood, Sadie Williams, Holly Fulton and Roksanda in Fashion and Freedom.

“Before the First World War women’s position in society was reflected in what they were wearing – very tight, restrictive, boned corsets, heavy Edwardian clothing which they could barely breathe in, let alone move or work in.”
   
At the end of the war many women were stripped of their new-found freedoms – munitions jobs were lost and transport jobs were closed to women. But 9% of men under 45 died in the war and many women found themselves heading households. Professions such as teaching and medicine were opened up to women who chose to remain single so, for some, singledom was preferable.

Despite anxiety about falling birth rates, and an effort to get women back into the home, post-war family sizes shrunk.

“When men came back women were expected to go back into their homes but the genie’s bottle was already opened and it was too late then,” said Vydelingum.
 
He’s worked in fashion for over a decade but Vydelingum admitted he was unaware of how much modern style owes to the First World War before he was asked to create the exhibition.

He continued: “From trouser suits to shorter hemlines and jumpsuits, which are really fashionable at the moment, that was the starting point.

“The 1920s is seen as a really important time in fashion because of the softer silhouette, the Jazz Era and women having more attitude but it is all because of the First World War.”

But if fashion during the First World War represents the agitation among women to earn autonomy then Second World War fashion offers a stark contrast.

From using beetroot juice to add a splash of lip colour, to tea staining legs and drawing on stocking seams with kohl, another Manchester exhibition, Fashion on the Ration at the Imperial War Museum North, shows how women maintained beauty standards under strict austerity in 1940s Britain.

“A quote from the editor of British Vogue at the time stated ‘It will be frightful if the war turns us into a nation of slothens,’” said Julie Summers, whose eponymous book was the starting point for the IWM exhibition.

“The understanding was that women had a duty to look great for two reasons – one was to cock a snook at Herr Hitler and to make the Germans absolutely aware that the British were not for buckling, and the second was that they wanted women to look beautiful to give the men, who were going off to fight, morale.

“It’s terribly sexist but I’m afraid it’s what it was like in the 1940s – they couldn’t have women loafing around in slacks and long baggy sweaters because that would be demoralising for the poor soldiers and airmen.”

What had happened in the 21 years between the world wars that found women stripped of their newfound freedom and embracing the femininity that had all but disappeared?

“The focus in the 1920s was on the generation of the lost youth, women wanted to look like little boys basically – not quite as crude as that – but by the 1930s the influence from Paris was huge,” said Summers. The waist was reintroduced and the bra was designed, splitting the bust for the first time, giving the female figure more shape.”

She said: “The critics of the late 1940s decried the hideous styles of the 1920s – the last post-war era.”

This was exacerbated by the mass production of clothes by the government from 1942 onwards.

“The utility designs were by the top couturiers of the 1930s – Edward Molyneux and Digby Morton and so on and it meant that women on a low income could buy a dress designed by a man who would normally design for the Queen or for aristocracy – for 30 shillings rather than 30 guineas,” said Summers.
 
“The progress women made in the First World War came through in the next 20 years and the focus for women was education.

“There were fewer battles to fight but they didn’t run as fast as they could have done into feminism – which could have hit by the 1940s – because they were being held back by men.”

By Antonia Charlesworth

Read the full version of this featue in the Big Issue North. Fashion and Freedom is at Manchester Art Gallery until November 27. Fashion on the Ration is at the Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, until May 2017 .