As satisfying to page through as Vogue in its own homely way, Woman is a typical women’s weekly magazine of the day, serving up a mélange of starchy advice columns, knitting patterns, fashion and beauty tips, household hints, schmaltzy short fiction and recipes — all with an unmistakably British stamp.

It’s absolutely impossible to read these issues and not be acutely aware there’s a war on. Nearly every article and ad is saturated with the realities and the mood of war — changed lifestyles, separation, extra work, rationing, shortages, challenges, anxiety, duty.

Rather unfairly, manufacturers of beauty and fashion goods advertised their wares even when there was depressingly little chance that women would actually be able to buy them:

But some things never change — in this case, the barrage of remedies for the bewildering profusion of digestive problems from which the women of Britain apparently suffer. (Seriously, am I the only woman on this island who doesn’t struggle with the mysterious affliction known as bloating? Probably not, but you’d never know it from the countless female-targeted ads for antacids, probiotic yogurts and, yes, laxatives.)

But I digress. Here’s an interesting insight into the received wisdom on personal hygiene in the 1940s. Remember, ladies, deodorize every few days and floss once a week! (James, wandering past the bathroom one night: “You floss?“)

Here’s a great example of what fashion editors had to contend with during the years of austerity restrictions, clothing rationing and shortages galore. “Here, love, pin a bit of dustmop on that butt-ugly frock!” I’ve left the image uncropped so you can also see a sample of the tepidly torrid fiction favored by Woman.

Finally, a sweet and innovative touch — colorful motifs for women to embroider to show in what branch of the forces their husband or sweetheart was serving:

Brazenly you can proclaim where your interest lies by working the emblem of your choice on the pocket of your dress, on a lapel, or on a scarf. More secretly you can decorate a slip, or work his emblem in the palm of your glove.

In the age of skirts, legs were on display a lot more, and fashionable legs, then as now, were smooth and tan. (For “tan”, in cloudy Britain, read “stockinged”.) Which meant that razor blade and stocking shortages constituted something of a fashion crisis. A sensible response might have been either to stop wearing skirts or to get used to the sight of pasty, hairy female legs. Admittedly, some women did circumvent the problem by wearing slacks, but you couldn’t get away with it all the time. And standards were standards. So painting up was the only alternative.

From Norman Longmate’s How We Lived Then:

A popular substitute for the real thing was sun-tan lotion, with a seam drawn in with eyebrow-pencil, but the nurses in one hospital produced an attractive tan shade with potassium permanganate crystals from the hospital dispensary, and a Blackpool woman stained her legs yellow with onion skins. Such expedients were not always successful: one Manchester teenager found that her tanned legs attracted more midges than men, and a Norfolk teenager’s ‘stockings’ disintegrated halfway through the evening as the colouring became powdery and rubbed off. Even more embarrassing was the experience of a Lancashire girl who stained her skin with gravy browning, and was rudely greeted by the local boys with cries of ‘Hello, Oxo legs!’

If you were lucky enough (?) to live in Croydon, you could leave it to the professionals. Here women have their legs painted at the Bare Leg Beauty Bar, 1941.

The sign promises, “No more ladders!” (US: ladder = run.) That’s one way of looking at it.

After a coat of paint, you needed a seam effect. Time to switch brushes and call in the specialist.

We seem to have come full circle — leg-painting is very much reminiscent of modern spray tans, although hopefully without the Oompa-Loompa orange so tragically common today. Thanks to black and white photography, we will never know.

Let’s kick off with two back-to-back “fashion police” clips from the 1940s. The first is American and comes to us from the Prelinger Archives via Glamourdaze. Here we see the wonderfully named Miss Ratherly Sterns, like a no-nonsense fairy godmother, make over a well-meaning but badly dressed protégé:

By contrast, in this British Pathé film from 1946, a disapproving narrator stationed in London’s Piccadilly Circus tears several women to shreds for minor fashion infractions. Give a girl a break, fella — clothes rationing has been in force for five years! I’m not sure about the “charming wimple” that eventually gets his seal of approval, either.

It’s a sign of how far we as a society have let ourselves go that even the Don’ts in these clips could stop traffic nowadays. They seem such sartorially innocent times by comparison. Fashion sins included things like “wearing the wrong hat or blouse with your smartly tailored suit” instead of “leaving the house in stained pink Uggs, a fake-down puffa vest with ratty fake fur trim, a t-shirt announcing I’M BRINGING SEXY BACK in gold lamé blockcaps and leggings two sizes too small with your underwear showing through”.

Can you keep a secret? I’m a total sucker for the makeover genre. That’s why I love films like Now, Voyager, TV shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and blogs like Already Pretty. The makeover genre is quintessentially American in the best way, with its relentless optimism, its inclusive ethos and its unwavering belief in the life-transforming power of self-improvement.

Here are two more videos via Glamourdaze, also starring Ratherly Sterns. The first contains useful advice on choosing hairstyles, makeup and necklines to suit your face shape — excellent if you’re trying to settle on your vintage look.

In this second film, Miss Sterns (would you dare to call her Ratherly? I wouldn’t) runs us through the basics of applying makeup. Note the total absence of eye makeup, the way blush/rouge is applied further back than today’s apple-cheeked ideal and the strict insistence on color coordination. Also, when did women stop doing their beauty routines sitting down?

This 1944 British Pathé clip about a school for mannequins (models) shows women learning to stand and move to show their clothes to best advantage and offers an interesting fix to keep wardrobe changes from spoiling your hair and makeup — put a (chiffon) bag on your head!

I’ve saved the best for last. Pattern for Smartness, a 19-minute film made by Simplicity in 1948, is vintage sewing paradise — a walk-through of the making of a dress from a Simplicity pattern using the tools and techniques of the time. The detailed instructional advice still holds true, and the evangelical tone is delightful. Who knew that a single home economics class could change you from a shuffling, pimply, badly-dressed troglodyte to a fresh-faced social butterfly with “that know-how look”?

Tagged: 1940s, hair, how to, makeup, sewing, video ]]> http://cargocultcraft.com/2010/03/03/you-will-be-prettier-1940s-fashion-and-beauty-advice-films/feed/ 8 Susannah