Fashion on the Ration Part 2

In my box of books and magazines in my parent's shed I found a copy of Yours magazine's 50 Years of Everyday Fashion.

Women having their legs browned during the nylon shortage

So as a follow up to the previous Fashion on the Ration post I thought I would post a couple of things from the pages about the war years.

There is another small mention of parachute silk underwear in a small section on recycled fashion. During World War 2 almost everything was rationed in the UK, and according to the magazine

"At the beginning of rationing you got 66 points a year, by the end that number had reduced to 48. A woollen dress took 11 coupons, a blouse 5, and a petticoat or cami knickers four."

66 points obviously didn't go very far, and so everything that could be mended or re-made was, and so this was why parachutes and silk maps were scavenged to make luxury underwear.

Queen Elizabeth II on her wedding day

Rationing effected almost everybody, even our Royal Family (although our Prime Minister, Winston Churchill opted out of being rationed and enjoyed copious amounts of brandy, champagne and cigars in the Cabinet War Rooms underneath London), and when Queen Elizabeth (still a Princess at the time) was married in 1947, a lot of people tried to send her extra ration book coupons for her dress, although coupon sharing was illegal so all of the coupons were sent back to their senders and the Queen made do with the 200 extra coupons that every other bride in the country was allocated for their wedding clothes.

Another thing that caught my eye mentioned the nylon shortage.

"Not wearing stockings was a sign that you were common! The tell tale line up the back of your calves was a clear sign that your legs were decently covered. Getting a regular supply of stockings during the war was difficult so, famously we used gravy browning and eyebrow pencils to fake seamed stockings when none were available."

It's funny how attitudes change over time, I feel like if that happened now the red tops would have a field day and start banging on about vain celebrity trends, although back then it was normal.

Fashion on the Ration

A primary school memory kicked back to the forefront of my brain by What Katie Did

Countess Mountbatten's map underwear as featured in What Katie Did Magazine issue 3

After buying my birthday underwear from What Katie Did it turns out Kev is now subscribed to their magazine, which was of course handed straight to me, as he is well past the age of flipping through lingerie magazines!

It turns out it's quite an interesting little read, as well as detailing their new collections (I actually really like the hybrid power mesh corslet) there are also a couple of small articles in there, and one of them is entitled "Fashion on the Ration."

Fashion on the Ration is about a temporary exhibit at The Imperial War Museum in London, that I would very much like to see but probably won't be able to due to lack of funds, it's about wartime street fashions during World War 2, and one of the photos is of Countess Mountbatten's lingerie made from a silk map that was given to her by her boyfriend in the RAF and it reminded me of when I was in year 2 at Primary School (for those unfamiliar with the English - it's different in Scotland, not sure about Wales and Northern Ireland-  schooling system, year 2 is not the second year of primary school, it's actually the third, and we go there between the ages of 6 and 7), and TV time happened once a week.

During this term we were watching Look and Read's Spywatch

The whole series is up on youtube, and bar a mild bit of cheesiness it's still worth a watch.

Every so often before TV time we'd be shown something that related to what we were about to watch and learn about it, and in one episode of Spywatch someone in a parachute (assumed to be a Nazi spy) lands near by.

This TV time one of the teachers from another class brought in a real World War 2 parachute, or what was left of it anyway, it had lots of little holes in it where it had been used as fabric to make underwear!

She explained that her mother and grandmother had collected it when a plane had crashed near by during a dogfight and the pilot had escaped in a parachute, which later got tangled in a tree. I don't recall weather the pilot was British or German or even survived (this was TV time twenty years ago after all!), but I do remember her saying that even clothing was rationed during the war and almost everything was recycled, so if a couple of metres of silk landed in your back garden you'd use them!