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Village Home Front - CLOTHES
Clothes Rationing would have had a lot less impact to most people back in 1940, for many people wore working clothes during the week and had a Sunday best outfit - I don`t know how they managed on Monday, the universal Wash Day!
Clothes rationing, 1st June 1941, when a quarter of the population were in uniform, whether in the forces or the many voluntary organisations, so factories had completely turned to producing wartime uniforms.
Families could get extra coupons for children, who have a nasty habit of growing out of their clothes, but many places and organisations set up clothing exchages where you could take outgrown clothes and swap them for larger sizes.
When buying new clothes, the shopper had to hand over coupons with a 'points' value as well as money. Every adult was initially given an allocation of 66 points to last one year, but this allocation shrank to only 24 coupons for the eight month period, after VE Day, from 1 September 1945 to 30 April 1946, effectively allowing the shopper only 3 coupons a month.
The 'Make Do and Mend' campaign was launched to encourage people to make their existing clothes last longer. I don`t imagine there were many people in Ruyton XI Towns who had two spare dresses to convert into one or who had access to parachute silk to make their undies. More important was Mrs. Len Edwards who lived in in Wykey who, would make the journey to Merseyside and return with clothes and shoes, doubtless gathered from bombed houses, which she sold to local people. Apparently she did a roaring trade and people came from miles around to buy her wares, which needed no coupons.
Endless articles appeared in women's magazines on how to make a man's old suit into a woman's two-piece costume, remodel shirts, make shorts for boys out of old flour bags or turn blankets into siren suits (onesies) for young children. Mrs. Dorothy Cocks remembered that Mrs. Hughes at the Post Office had a sewing machine, perhaps people were able to borrow this very useful bit of technology to alter or make clothes
Looking at designs of clothes during the war show that revere collars and buttons down the front of blouses and dresses copied the design of uniforms. Dresses and skirts were shorter, to save on fabric and slacks became commonplace when many women were doing men`s jobs.
Keeping up appearances was very important to keep up moral, but make up was expensive so women and girls resorted to black shoe polish for eyebrows and mascara, and beetroot juice for a bit of lip colour. Bare legs were stained with gravy browning and a pencil line down the back of the leg looked like a stocking seam when such luxuries were not available, and sugar water kept the waves in your hair in place.
Clothes did not come off ration until 1949.
The picture of Ann Miller in her WREN uniform and me in my dress made from a period pattern in fabric my mother had bought, probably just after the end of clothes rationing.
