Fashion, Society, and the First World War: International Perspectives

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

The historiography of the Great War has been significantly renewed in recent years; yet, despite its crucial social, economic, and cultural importance, the role that fashion played in shaping wartime experiences and economies on an international scale between 1914 and 1918 has largely gone unaddressed. Fashion, Society, and the First World War fills this gap by offering a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the war on the ways that the fashion industry functioned in a global wartime economy, as well as on the ways that women and men negotiated this new world.

With an international, thematic approach, and illustrated in full color throughout, this volume discusses the reconfiguration of the fashion industry, wartime style and production, and the reframing of selfhood, gender roles, and national identity through visual, print and material culture. Through analysis of archives, visual chronicles, press, and garments, and covering an impressive range of topics, from the feathered showgirl in Paris to the evolution of pilots’ uniforms, these exciting essays show how fashion, even temporarily, encouraged the articulation of an identity, a society, and a nation.

Fashion, Society, and the First World War provides an extensive overview by leading fashion historians on an industry in the midst of major transformation and is both an invaluable guide and starting point for all researchers, curators, and students interested in fashion history and the cultural history of the period.