2019 Fashion on the Ration Challenge

Laura_Elsewhere wrote: »

I think what you're describing here is more an Americanised look - certainly something I think of as what very wealthy Americans in the early 80s wore, which was then copied by the UK fashion magazines... Christie Brinkley, people like that. Probably traced directly back to the tailored style of American stars like Katharine Hepburn.

The blue jacket I would call a blazer, I think.

Like this, you mean? Princess Diana and Kate Middleton...

Laura_Elsewhere wrote: »

(EDIT: this is one of the worst posts I've ever written, totally rambling, but I'll leave it up in case bits are helpful. Some of it I've written w/ref to accurate 1950s looks, and other parts w/ref to 1980s looks, argh... you probably wanted to think about 21st century looks...! Sorry...)


I'd say you've got it right if you want to look like you're doing a rather stagey kind of play, and are walking round town in costume, a bit over-done, handing out flyers for it...!


I think, and it is only my opinion, so it isn't necessarily any more right than yours! But I think that you maybe want to look at what went before, because the 1950s looks you're talking about are partially derived from being able to afford the new styles from designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Dior, but also partially derived from being the sort of people brought up to spend vast amounts of time and money to look that effortlessly well-groomed, and part of that goes to the inter-war years which are possibly the most inexplicable bit of British history to anyone unfamiliar with it all, because it's when the class structure implodes to an extent.

OK, are you sitting comfortably?

You have two world wars, the 1914-18 and the 1939-45. Before the first war, the middle class is only medium-sized, and the working class is huge, and the upper class is small and largely based around old-money ie land and status.
After the first war, instead of an actual revolution, we had a very British revolution in social terms. From the outside, much stayed the same, but in reality... for a start, two millions "surplus women" whose potential husbands had died in the war - and because junior officers were disproportionately killed (in part, due to the principle of leading your men 'going over the top' so being most likely to be killed), there were more middle-class women in these surplus women - and they had been brought up to marry, and so had no idea how to earn a living... suddenly, they have to.
Working class women had their own drastic changes - during the 1914-18 war they had quietly got on and done many men's jobs including dangerous and heavy work, largely ignored by modern people because the outfits aren't as sexy as Rosie the Riveter. They fought fires - in long skirts - and all kinds of things... but then come 1918, they were instantly booted out of their jobs in order for men to come back into their old jobs, even if the woman had done it better. The men who came back maimed were often very badly disturbed, of course. So many working class women were pretty frustrated, being back at home after enjoying working, and with the company of a damaged and untreated shell-shocked husband.
Meanwhile, the upper classes... well, on the one hand many had lost most of their income, as their investments had been in Russia or France or Germany before 1914, and other estates went bankrupt because of multiple death duties - the father died in battle, so the estate paid Death Duties and it passed to the heir, who then died six months later, so pay more DD and it goes to the second son, who then dies of fever in a battlefield hospital, more DD and on to some cousin or other who then shoots himself from shellshock... some estates were paying Death Duties three or four or six times in the war years. Very little left for anyone to inherit in the end - and some entailed estates were broken up after all male heirs were killed.
BUT... apart from losing their stately homes or living on smaller incomes, by and large the elite were much less effected by the first world war - they continued to travel to the South of France, to America... think Jeeves & Wooster! In addition, the young officers who survived adopted a reckless way of living, and their fast set in London was the Bright Young Things who lived every day as if it were their last and behaved in ways that make the 1960s stories of the Rolling Stones look like a Sunday School... sex and drugs, long before rock and roll...

so there was a huge amount of resentment simmering. The Depression hit middle and working classes hard - it did hit the upper class but in the way that equated to, "well, only the three trips to New York this year, darling".

That's part of what lies behind the British tendency to sneer at the upper classes and deride them - and it's why the Sloan Ranger look you mention was never, ever, ever, ever a style anyone wanted to look like, ime! I'm very amused that you even mention Sloan Rangers, as even at the time the name was derogatory and mocking, and certainly not anything copied by anyone except those who wanted to look like Lady Di - which, to be fair, was probably a bit of the fashion magazines, thinking back, but only briefly during the engagement and wedding, so 1980-81, really.

I hope that's not too negative, but...

I dunno - it's certainly much more complicated - the twin-set was widely worn by virtually all middle-class women, partly because of dreadful heating - and you wore them in winter, because of course you were layering - nowadays people think one thick jumper is warm, but they knew about warmth in those days and would probably have worn a fine wool vest next the skin, then the short-sleeved jumper, then the long-sleeved cardigan, effectively turning it into a long-sleeved top with two vests under it! Layering without bulk.

The tweed jacket - well, more usually that would be worn with a tweed skirt. The "coat and skirt" was an outfit in itself, and the jacket usually kept on indoors - and you'd probably, if well-off, have finer tweeds for the city in different colours, and rougher tweeds for the country. That';s totally separate from the horsey look, which would only really be worn when going riding - much like you wouldn't have worn a tracksuit in the 1950s unless you were going running!

I'm being horribly rambling in this post - I do apologise, it's been a long day!

The cardigan over a floral cotton frock - well, working class women were wearing that between the wars, and it almost certainly wouldn't be the cardigan from a twin-set, because the kind of woman who wore light cotton floral frocks wouldn't wear twin-sets, and vice versa!

Twin-sets by the 1950s are for married women, especially older ones. Light floral cotton frocks are very much a young woman's dress, an unmarried one especially, almost like a teenage fashion. You see photos of woman with young babies, and the women are wearing the big-skirted 50s summer frocks, but once the children get to school age, the skirt and jumper takes over, really. I'm racking my brains, and no doubt someone will find a hoard of online photos to prove me wrong! But I can't think of any adult women, as opposed to younger women, in those frocks, or younegr women in twin-sets in that way...

I think one of the problems is that Father Brown has fun with the costumes - and bear in mind that Bunty, especially, is dressed in flamboyant and nearly shocking styles. Some of the later episodes get a bit tiresome with the shoe-horning of modern behaviour or tropes into the 1950s, and I think they're having a lot of fun with Bunty's clothes.

But for any woman over about 25 or 30, I'd say they'd be more likely to wear a dress and cardigan like Mrs McCarthy, and in fact also like Lady Felicia - difference being in details, hats, gloves, shoes esp heel height, and so on.
And for the majority of women on lower incomes, middle class especially, skirt and jumper/cardigan over blouse...

Ooh, this is an interesting one. I do think though that you have to allow for people's own style when thinking about what they wore. I know I would look awful in a twinset and pearls - and I'm very like my paternal grandmother (short, curly, olive skinned, small waist, although of course hers was really small and mine is only small in proportion to my other dimensions), and so she mostly wore patterned dresses or strong colours, which she knew suited her. I wear floral blouses for the same sort of reason - not too chocolate box and twee, but if you're a summery sort of person then that works. My maternal grandmother on the other hand, who was a 5 foot 10 flame haired Irish lass with a build to match, went for the suits and tailored bits. Again, they looked well on her (broad shoulders) but would have either swamped my father's mother or worse, made her look like she was in school uniform.
And I never saw my Irish grandmother in a floral dress either - I'm sure she knew it wouldn't work on her.
I think there's a temptation, looking at those old newsreels and programs, to forget that people weren't all wearing the same. As far as they could do, they wore clothes they knew suited them.

Then there's the whole town v country thing, which is another factor again. I haven't seen Father Brown, but I have read the stories and if it's remotely the same then I think we're talking village, and of course tweeds and sturdy shoes were practical garb for the country, thick and thorn and mud repellent, walk 10 miles and take all the evidence off with a clothes brush type clothes.

PipneyJane wrote: »

Hmmm....How patterned and tightly woven is the tweed? Going on the bias would counteract any clash in patterning - since you won't need to match the check - but it occurs to me that it may curl. (I have no idea why my brain says it will curl. Probably something I absorbed at my mother's knee.)

- Pip