TIME CAPSULE:
Adult clothing made its wartime adjustment primarily in the promotion of fashions that used less fabric, heedless of the implication that new fashion guidelines implied new clothes. For example, the cuffs on men”™s pants were eliminated to save fabric, but then many men let their old pants hang in the closet to buy the new, “patriotic” style. Fabric saving was the rule:
Hats have shrunk and many men and women go about bareheaded. Women who used to regard long skirts as an evening necessity have taken to shorter and less formal clothes for the duration. In Washington, D.C., a Brotherhood of Sensible Men has adopted slacks with open-collar, short-sleeve shirts as an office uniform. Yet such “uniforms” did not become standard and most middle-class women and men continued to think of a hat as essential to proper appearance.
Any serious accommodation to war needs was slight. Newspapers and magazines ran hundreds of pages of advertisements for women”™s clothing, with very little notice of the war. Instead, a woman was more apt to be seriously affected by the rationing of clothing and shoes for her children. Her own wardrobe she could redo and update, but growing children simply must have replacement shoes and clothing. (American women during World War II: an encyclopedia – Page 97)