Book Review: 1940s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook

From fashionable frocks to hats, bags, shoes, and even some underpinnings, 1940s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook compiled and edited by Emmanuelle Dirix and Charlotte Fiell certainly lives up to its name. This rather large book is an impressive collection of an assortment of images from high fashion shots to artistic advertisements and magazine covers. Through this variety, Dirix and Fiell try to offer a varied and diverse look at 40s fashion as possible. The main argument of this work, and its driving goal, was to provide a look at what women’s fashion was like during the war years. They suggest in their introduction that very little has been covered during the war years except, of course, trousers and masculine separates. To be more specific, they state that “[w]while many books on 1940s post –war fashion exist, little has been written about styles prevalent actually during World War II. Most twentieth – century fashion compendiums tend to include very little about the period, falling into generalizations . . .” To fill the pictorial and scholarly gap that they believe to be present, this book was created in 2013.

To support their vast work, Dirix and Fiell begin their work with an elaborate introduction about 1940s fashion during the war years in the United States, France, Britain, and Nazi Germany. By examining each of these countries, a more rounded perspective of fashion during the war years is offered to serve as a foundation and context for the abundant images to come. In the pages concerning Nazi Germany, how the war impacted their fashion is very evident in that the regime aimed to control the fashion industry and push out the Jewish influence in fashion and project their racist goals. In Britain and the United States, rationing created a whole new kind of practical fashion.  In France, fashion was a tool of opposition to reject the occupying the Germans.

The images that generously populate this work are truly the crowning glory. These images cover nearly all aspects of women’s fashion in the 1940s but these images also are this works greatest weakness. Although Dirix and Fiell aim to delve into women’s fashion during the war years, they consistently focus on high fashion instead of the common, everyday pieces that most women would have worn and been familiar with. Although average women would have  seen and been inspired by the fashions that graced the silver screen, do they actually represent war time fashion? Do they represent what average women were wearing? Many of the images in this work, although beautiful, are definitely not an accurate representation of war time fashion as many of these fashion would have been incredibly expensive in their day. These high end fashions would have occupied the dreams of the 1940s war time woman and likely not her closet. Although the images in this work may have been inspiring in their day (and even today), they are not really everyday pieces for your everyday woman.

Another critique of this work that I have and must divulge is that an abundance of the images are not from the war years but are from the post war period! In a work that wants to focus on the war years, there are an awful lot of images from 1947, ’48, ‘49. From what I understand, the war ended in 1945, yes? The only reason why I can conceive that they post war images are included is to show the evolution of 1940s fashion but these post war looks almost dominate the work unfortunately.  A work that wanted to fill a gap in the works on 1940s fashion, to be specific, from the war years, missed the mark somewhat.

As a whole, this is a nice work and worth the cost which is not necessarily cheap. The images are nice, colorful, detailed, and do indeed show a nice variety. There are many images from the war years of the 1940s but sadly, they seem to be in the minority when compared to the rest of the content in this work. A nice aspect within this work is that there are many European fashion images, largely French.  Many of the images that are from the war years in this book appear to be French in fact. There are some images that are American and British in origin, and lastly German. There are very few images depicting German fashion to be more clear. The American images, like the rest, are mostly high end designer works. There are some that are from period magazines. There are very few images from average, everyday women except those possibly in Military Uniform but I suspect that those are staged images with models. For a fashion historian, this is a very nice work. An excellent anthology of 1940s fashion covering almost everything from the skin out. If one needs ideas to update and existing wardrobe or build upon an existing foundation, there is some excellent ideas in here. For someone, particularly a beginner, interested in creating a war time impression with authenticity in mind, I suggest looking elsewhere. Many of the looks in this book are very high end. The looks that would have inspired women in the period but may or may not have been actually executed in whole in real life by the masses.  Overall, I believe this work exhibited 1940s fashion not necessarily how it was, but how it wanted to be. Paging through these beautiful fashion images, you do not get an impression of war but that of a nation at peace creating fanciful women’s fashion.
 I would conclude that this is still a great book to have in ones library as it can help train your eye to period shapes, styles, and larger 40s trends. Depending on your uses, this book does have a use but I recommend surrounding this work with others to fully round out your specific needs. For example, my main focus has been women's fashion in Nazi Germany and although this book offers a nice basis, it is very cloudy and lacks detail for in-depth study in that particular area.  

Full Citation:

Dirix, Emmanuelle and Charlotte Fiell. 1940s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook. London: Goodman Fiell, 2013.