Whatever happened to the girly tee? For a few years, back in the 90s and early noughties, things looked promising. Retailers, slowly realizing that women have money of our own these days and occasionally buy logo T-shirts too, introduced lady-specific blanks with scoopnecks, cap sleeves and shaped waists. I liked being able to buy a flattering, figure-hugging Elephant 6 or Trogdor tee. It said, “Yes, world! All this and great taste in pop culture too!” But lately — possibly for recession-related reasons — a lot of vendors seem to have gone back to the dark days of unisex, offering only traditional designed-for-men boxy tees, or as I call them, pajama tops. Which is fine if you only want to proclaim your love for a band on days when you’re too sick, hung over or depressed to leave the house.

I have too many T-shirts with great logos but unflattering cuts, and not enough form-fitting base layers. The next logical step was obvious.

To cut down this T-shirt into a camisole I used Jalie 2564, which like many Jalie patterns has received tons of positive reviews over at PR. The nice thing about the camisole is that it has a built-in shelf bra, and both camisole and bra can be cut from one T-shirt with a little fudging. This project was ridiculously easy even for me, with my limited experience of stretch fabrics and total lack of experience of fold-over or plush elastic. It whipped up in a little over an hour. It doesn’t even require an overlocker/serger; I could easily have used my machine’s zigzag and 3-step zigzag stitch instead.

My only quibble with this pattern is a matter of personal taste: I like my camisoles a bit sluttier. Next time I make this pattern I’ll definitely alter the design to make the straps wider-set, the scoopneck lower and the shelf bra shorter for increased balcon effect.

Obligatory Shearwater plug:

I’m loving my first tentative forays into the world of DIY lingerie! However, I am finding stretch lace and lingerie elastics (FOE, plush elastic, picot elastic etc.) difficult to source in colors other than white, black and nude. Tips on where to find these things are most welcome.

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.

If I were a millionaire and weren’t on the ration, I would be all over these. As it is, I’ll have to content myself with ruining your budget.

Little did I know that working women had the same problem back in 1949, when the phrase “sexual harassment” was not so much as a glint in Merriam-Webster’s eye. Their solution was a lot more becoming than the bookstore burqa. It was called the blixie — an all-in-one blouse/camiknicker set!

Photo by Christine Kelly.

But that, in retrospect, was child’s play. In neither of those places was I ever cold as often or for as long as in the UK, where staying warm takes advanced skillz.

Why is it so hard to keep warm here? The main problem with British cold is that it’s a damp cold — persistent, penetrating and demoralizing. Ordinary layering is no proof against damp; it has a way of seeping straight through clothes and into your bones.

Damp is deceptive. It makes the climate feel much colder than a mere glance at the thermometer would seem to indicate. It’s perfectly understandable to bundle up in down parkas, wooly hats, gloves and scarves when the temperature stands at -15°C, but you feel like an idiot doing it when it’s +15°C and the crocuses are blooming. So off you go in your thin spring jacket and by the time you reach work your nails have turned blue. Whoops.

Cold often catches you off-guard here. Central heating, double-glazing and insulation are not universal, so unexpected drafts and chilliness are normal. Plus, even summer nights can be disproportionately chilly, and temperatures year-round can fluctuate dramatically in the course of a few hours. You never know what the weather will do from hour to hour, let alone week to week. Woe betide the newcomer who steps forth on a June afternoon in nothing more than a fluttery sundress — she’s likely to be whimpering with incipient hypothermia come evening. And let’s not talk about waiting at bus stops.

To complicate matters, the Brits aren’t particularly good at managing their core temperatures either. Both my present boyfriend and my ex reproach me with pointing out how cold their country is, as though it would never have bothered them if I hadn’t brought it up. To be fair, I think that might actually be true. Natives of this chilly isle mostly cope with the cold by employing that great British panacea, denial. T.D. Wilson argues in Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious that cultural programming (“Your wedding day is the happiest day of your life”, “Nice girls don’t get angry”) can actually override our perceptions and feelings about what is happening to and within us. British cultural programming has a lot to say about the climate. Standard dogmas seem to include “It’s summer, so it’s warm”, “If I’m wearing a sweater/coat, I must be warm enough” and “It can’t be that cold if there isn’t any snow”.

And a day at the beach is lovely!

These shared beliefs are so strong I’m fairly sure a lot of people here don’t even realize when they’re cold or uncomfortable. The Bloke certainly didn’t realize until he bought himself a thick, insulated peacoat from J. Crew that no other winter coat he’d owned before had actually kept him warm. Besides, putting up with discomfort is more British than doing anything about it. (Actual phone conversation — James: “The flat is freezing. I’m sitting here shivering.” Me: “Well, have you turned on the heat? Put on your thick sweater? Wrapped yourself in a blanket?” James: “…no…”)

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that being unprepared for the weather is as British as Terry Wogan and the last night at the Proms. Schools still send small children forth on a winter’s day dressed in shorts and knee socks. Girls in the north of England are legendary for hitting the town in winter in nothing but a minidress and strappy sandals. A rainy day will reveal how many Londoners don’t carry umbrellas. And let’s not forget Scott of the Antarctic.

As Stephanie says, many Brits seem to dress for a fantasy climate rather than the one they actually live in. Unfortunately the wishful wardrobe doesn’t work for me, so I’ve had to spend years learning to cope with the unique brand of cold in which Britain specializes. These are my main tactics:

Choosing the right fibers. Wool is the answer. Wool, wool and more wool. It keeps you warm even when wet, which is paramount in a damp climate. Surprisingly, considering that Britain’s wealth owes so much to the wool trade, that it still exports plenty of high-quality wool to the US and Japan and that the country is full of sheep, it can be difficult to source good wool here. Which is why I often have to resort to…

Importing wool from abroad. Oh, how I love my wool-double-cloth-with-Thinsulate American coat. And my New Zealand merino base layers. And my Italian wool-and-silk thermal camisoles. And my German wool tights. And my Italian wool stockings.  And my French wool beret. And so on. To be fair, I also swear by my thrifted Scottish cashmere sweaters and Hebridean tweed, so there’s that.

But the problem is that I can’t just pile on the scarves and parkas while everyone else is wandering around in short-sleeved cotton blouses and skirts. So I keep warm while blending in by…

Using hidden insulation. Work shirts are so thin these days that unless you like showing the world your bra, a camisole is a good idea anyway. So why not make it thermal? Bella di Notte wool-and-silk thermals are warm and pretty. Real wool tights are another one of my secret weapons — wool tights under a slip and wool skirt are warmer even than long underwear and jeans. And a linen blouse under a sweater (linen is another wonderful damp deflector) is heavenly.

Do you have a secret weapon against the cold? I’d love to hear your top tips on staying snug, smug and cozy!

Dorothy Lamberton is ill with a chill caused it is said by wearing no vest. Comment on Dorothy has been galore. To my surprise I learned that this last winter [1944-45] many people have been wearing two pairs of knickers and two vests as the only way of counteracting the thinness of underclothing now being sold… Oh, these French knickers… they should engrave a pair on [government rationing head] Hugh Dalton’s tombstone, or rather on the tombstones of all the people who blame Hugh Dalton for illness caused by draughts up their legs. The manufacturers just won’t put elastic around the knees.

That Dorothy. What a hussy.

Obviously, wearing plenty of underwear was a more commonly accepted fortification against the British climate in those days than it is now — I wear thermal underwear of one sort or another for most of the winter, but I’m definitely in the minority. That’s a little strange, because until recently, the vest played a significant role in Britishness. A sober, insulating mid-layer worn for “health” rather than aesthetic reasons, it represented prudence, hygiene and respectability.

So invaluable was the vest considered that the folk saying “Cast ne’er a clout till May be out” (trans.: “Don’t take off any clothes until you’re REALLY sure winter is over”) is still interpreted to refer to vests specifically. To wander around without a vest was to court illness, even sin — hence the office gossip about Dorothy. British audiences in 1934 probably got an extra frisson of taboo from watching Clark Gable’s bare torso emerging from a shirt in It Happened One Night.

So what was a vest? It’ s what Americans call an undershirt on Don Draper or a wife-beater on this guy. Men wore cotton or wool vests (also known as singlets) or string vests under their shirts; women wore long, close-fitting thermal vests, presumably over bra, panties and girdle (and under slip?). All the 1940s vests I’ve seen referred to by that name are wool knit:

Bestway vest pattern, for sale at Sew Retro UK

Old-skool vests  and other sensible underwear are still available to buy at British clothing shops serving older people, like Woods of Morecambe, but have otherwise nearly vanished from the modern radar, to be replaced by… nothing. This is understandable — the vest probably wasn’t considered sexy even back in the day — but kind of foolish, as despite the introduction of central heating, the British climate hasn’t changed much since the days of poor Dorothy Lamberton. Winter still demands plenty of insulation, especially under a skirt. The most London women can do is put on a pair of synthetic tights. Whoopty-do. That won’t make your filmy cotton blouse any warmer.

I for one would appreciate some draught-excluding knickers on a day like today. I’m wearing a skirt and stockings, and my keister is freezing.

• Bonus!: “See My Vest“

I’m pretty sure UK clothing manufacturers were prohibited from using lace, so the trimming on the bodice is a little surprising. As one commenter pointed out, it could easily have been added by the wearer — lace was unrationed and still available to buy.

What’s also interesting is that, because the fabric isn’t wide enough to allow the slip’s full length to be cut on the bias, the hem has been pieced, which looks pretty startling in a commercially manufactured garment:

And here’s a beautifully cut tweed utility suit by probably-Charles Creed:

The lines are extremely simple, but the designer’s added a bias inset at center back for interest:

It was a stroke of genius getting high-end designers on board for the Utility scheme. As I have found out to my cost, it takes much more skill to make a very simple garment look good than something with a lot of frou-frou. The cut of many utility suits is superb, which goes a long way to make up for their relative severity.

If you don’t live handy to the V&A (or even if you do), I suggest you check out their Fashion in Detail books, which go into considerable detail about these and other garments held at the museum, along with glimpses inside at the garments’ construction. Drool!

Three centuries of frock porn from the V&A trip over at my Flickr set!

Tagged: 1940s, austerity, history, pr0n, underwear, utility ]]> http://cargocultcraft.com/2010/02/06/utility-fashion-at-the-va/feed/ 7 Susannah Utility slip Utility slip, bodice detail Pieced hem