A 'Zazou' during WWII occupied France

Roger-Viollet/Rex Features

1947 The 'New Look' by Christian Dior

Rex Features

Stormy Weather 1943  BUY

Billie Holiday, Jazz Singer  BUY

BUY

     -       war and peace

   On the face of it – given that the decade was dominated by WWII -one would think that the 1940s would be the least important decade for matters concerning fashion, style, design and popular music. But, in fact, precisely the opposite is the case. Today everyone talks about the importance of the 1960s but in truth this decade simply saw the majority – all those baby boomers now teenagers and young adults – adopt the countercultural, ‘alternative’ and downright ‘hip’ innovations and revolutions of a tiny but, in time, crucially important minority which first emerged in the ‘40s.

   Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and war in Europe began. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor at the very end of 1941 and America entered the war soon after. Germany surrendered in 1945. Japan surrendered later in the same year. But even after the war’s end, for most, rationing and depravation meant that frivolous matters like fashion had to be ignored. And yet, a perfect illustration of the fundamental, driving importance of style and appearance to our species, against all logic and the wishes of serious politicians, fashion fever swept like a stylish epidemic around the world even while, especially in Britain and Europe, life’s basic necessities were still in short supply .

   In 1947 the French fashion designer Christian Dior unveiled his ‘New Look’ collection. With a very feminine pinched in waist, an enormous, wide flaring skirt and a lot of décolletage, Dior’s design was a precise opposite of the masculine, severe and undecorated styles women had little choice but to adopt throughout the war years. Dior’s New Look was proclaiming in no uncertain terms that the war was over, that women could be feminine and frivolous once again, that Paris was still the world capital of fashion and that, as had always been the case in fashion, the rich elite  would decide what was beautiful or ugly, fashionable or passé, avant-garde or old hat.

   And women all over the West and the westernized world went crazy for Dior’s New Look. It seemed clear that the old order had once again been restored: as had been the case for centuries, the rich elite of Europe would tell the rest of the world how to dress, how to decorate their homes and what was ‘art’ and what was rubbish. Things would be the same as before the war: Culture (always with a capital ‘C’) would be in the safe in the hands of the learned, rich establishment.  

   Yet at the very same moment when Dior’s New Look was apparently taking over the world, a new force – streetstyle – was being born. But not in Old Europe, in New America.

   Even at the height of the war – thumbing their noses at fabric rationing – the black jazz musicians of Harlem were strutting their stuff in big oversized Zoot suits. At the same time, somewhere On the Road, a new generation of jazz loving, marijuana smoking, sexually experimental, anti-establishment Beats were dressing down in denim jeans and other casual styles which originated not in some posh Old World fashion salon in Paris but rather from the wrong side of the tracks in working-class America.

   Also in 1947, especially in California, bands of outlaw Bikers were showing off their own dressing down, grunge style which featured black ‘Perfecto’ leather jackets, greasy, ripped jeans and big chunky motorcycle boots – the look which would startle or captivate (depending on your point of view) the world in 1953 with the young Marlon Brando’s The Wild One (which was based on a real life incident in Hollister California which took place in 1947).

   In Britain, black-market wide-boys known as ‘Spivs’ were, like the Zooties in America, thumbing their noses at both fabric rationing and the ‘good taste’ dictated by fashion and convention by flaunting a more is more approach to style which featured huge suits with enormous lapels, flash accessories and risqué hand painted silk ties which were as wide as they were eye-catching.

   The likes of Christian Dior and all the rest of the fashion world took absolutely no notice of all these low lifes who obviously wouldn’t know quality, chic design or good taste if it came up and bit them. For years, well into the ‘50s, cheap copies of the New Look kept ‘trickling down’ from the upper orders to the plebs. But the revolution had begun – the cool cats very much let out of the bag - and within fifty years the citadels of High Fashion, High Art and High Culture would all begin to crumble under the unrelenting siege of pop culture (now, democratized, with a small ‘c’), pop music and all the many and varied forms of streetstyle which just kept bubbling up from the wrong side of the tracks, from ‘race music’ (as the precursors of rock & roll were known) and from the huge baby boom generation’s determined, desperate search for authenticity – a personal authenticity and individuality needed to counter the mind-numbing advertising and the rigid suburban conformity which were themselves born of the 1940s.

Looks

Women’s fashion:

During the war rationing and the fact that many women were working in factories and on farms brought a no-nonsense masculine appearance. Then in 1947 Dior’s New Look saw a dramatic shift back to femininity with a wasp waste and full skirt – except that, especially in Britain, all the required fabric was difficult if not impossible to come by.

Men’s fashion:

The shift towards sportswear and casual dress begun in the 1920s and 1930s gains further momentum: think Bing Crosby and Bob Hope playing golf. When suits are worn, however, they are big and bold – often double-breasted with lots of flash buttons and worn with extra wide ‘kipper’ ties.

Zooties:

Defying wartime cloth rationing, Black jazz musicians and Mexican-American Pachucos in California flaunt huge ‘zoot’ suits adorned with black and white ‘correspondent’ shoes, long gold chains, big ties and ‘conked’ (artificially straightened) hair.

Western Style:

A romanticized vision of the American cowboy as devised by Hollywood and Country & Western musicians sees city dudes who have never been on a horse wearing Stetson hats, string ties, embroidered shirts and ornate cowboy boots.

Bikers:

The look which Marlon Brando perfected in The Wild One in 1954 first appeared on the roads on California and elsewhere in America in the 1940s: black leather ‘Perfecto’ motorcycle jacket, oil drenched denim jeans, chunky motorcycle boots, greased back hair . . . and,  naturally, a Harley.

 Download PDF Version