Women Fashion During 1920-1950

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During the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, the role of working-class women became a burden to what one would call British National Identity. As one can note from Deborah Valenze’s book The First Industrial Woman, women who began to work in order to support their families were seen as a masculine because they would dress showing more skin. The new evolving identity of working class women became criticized not only by men but also by women of higher economic status. This would eventually lead to the first feminist wave in Britain from 1848 through 1920. This new wave in Britain was a reaction to the way working women had been put down by British society in the earlier period of the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, the ‘gentle lady’ of the Victorian Age became unacceptable, the role that domesticity was the right role to be played by women became a critique. The suffrage movement in many ways led women to embrace a new form of ‘masculinity’ in clothing. The working class woman’s ‘masculinity’ became one to be praised. One can begin to see this at the end of First Feminist wave in the 1920s when the flapper style became the new fashion. Society in Britain had become one of man v. woman, and women retaliated through fashion by adapting masculine style clothing to cover their curvaceous figures. Nevertheless, the Second World War’s impact on society brought with it a new ideology of Britain v. the outside enemy, which brought a revitalization of traditional women roles illustrated by the clothing. The following is an analysis on women’s clothing post the First World War and through the Second World War.
To begin, it is important to connect the fashion of the 1920s to events that were occurring in the late 19th Century to fu...

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...Vintage Inspired Fashion Blog. Lady Jojo’s Boutique. http://ladyjojosboutique.wordpress.com/ Thomas, Pauline, and Guy Thomas. Fashion-era.com. http://www.fashion-era.com/index.htm
Valenze, Deborah. The First Industrial Woman. Oxford University Press, 1995.
Vogue Magazine Archives. British Vogue. http://www.vogue.co.uk/
“Women’s History, Feminist History.” Women’s History, Feminist History. N.p.,n.d. Web 03 Oct. 2013 http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/womens_history.html Women's Social & Political Union; 1903-c.1919; suffrage organization. The Women’s Library :
Celebrating and Recording Women’s Lives (London Metropolitan University 2007) http://calmarchive.londonmet.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Persons&dsqSearch=Code=='NA764'&dsqCmd=Show.tcl
WWII a British Focus. http://www.warlinks.com/memories/index.php

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