Test. Test. Test. Captioning performed by vitac but men would be reduced to running out the barrel, driven to drink for lack of clothes. See how much marjory and great grandma ma wore. Wasnt she extravagant . Isnt it marvelous, i can get one for only 14 coupons. Recent rags so dad could cook in perfect safety. And now its sorry. British humor always my students love their british humor because its so bizarre. But nonetheless it does do a really good job of showing how weve come from these really over the top dresses that would have cost 48 coupons and now were really going to slim down. When it comes to the kids we did see kids also were given coupons and the children who fit into what they call the outsize range got ten extra tickets. Thats really a nice way of saying our larger children who might have been overweight, the outsized, they got a little bit of at what, but we dont see schools restrict or kind of relaxing on their uniforms. They still required students to come in uniforms so, mom, youre going to need to plan ahead and you are going to buy big because that uniform has to fit him for years to come. So that does make things very difficult. We will see the women really working on creating different innovative ways of exchanging goods. So the Womens Voluntary Service set up clothing exchanges and it was just kind of like a swap, everybody brought their old stuff and depending upon how much or what you brought or the quality of what you brought, you got points to then spend on other peoples secondhand goods. So this was one way that they worked together to try to figure out a way to prevent your poor little boy from in his short shorts that they show here. Beyond the rationing of clothing itself they did also have specifications of what kind of restrictions you had on your clothing. Coats and jackets could have no more than three pockets, dresses could have two. We arent going to waste any metal or leather on buttons. And then something that was really interesting, the boys cant wear long pants or long trousers until they turn 13. So if we have all of our little boys in shorts, thats a lot less fabric, it saves here and there and its still a trend that we see. No tail coats, no embroidery, no braid, no lace. All of those kind of extra things are taken away. And for the ladies, sorry on your womens underwear, we are no longer going to have shearing or ruching or any fancy stitching, we are just really getting to the basics. But with that being said, the way that women looked was incredibly important, especially in the uk. It was really unfashionable to be showy or over the top fancy, however, you had to look good. So much so that the slogan became beauty was a duty. It is your job to look good. And so makeup is never rationed. It does fall under a luxury tax so you do have to pay more for it, but its never rationed. We encourage all of the ladies to look their best because it was a morale booster for the women, okay, was what they viewed it as, that women would never feel comfortable if they couldnt go out in public with makeup on. The ministry of supply in the uk said that makeup was as important to women as tobacco is to men. So it was really important for them to keep it that way. This is really significant when we look at whats also happening on the access side. In germany we see a real trend for women to be more may tronl or motherly, they are not doing a lot of makeup, they are not doing a lot of glamour. On the uk side we said, no, were going to do totally opposite and have all of our girls looking great always and we are going to be different and we are going to keep that up. So women took a lot of pride and effort to look good. Even though its not rationed, makeup is expensive with that luxury tax, so a lot of homemade cosmetics come into play. We see beat root juice being used as lipstick and i dont recommend it, but boot polish for your mascara. So we are inventive in the kinds of things we are using to make sure we still look good. Becky touched on this, but utility fashion. How do we make it look good. Great britain was so concerned about making sure that women look good they commissioned eight designers to create a whole new line of utility clothing that would be appealing. So some of the fashion is what we can of as iconic, 1940s and even some of the early 50s kind of clothing was paid for by the British Government to make sure that we were able to buy in, if you will, to this rationing. Here are some more examples of some really classic utility fashion that we see in Great Britain as well as the united states. Reif you were sing is Something Else that we see, and this is a lot of times just happening at home. Ive got this piece of fabric, what can i use and what can i make it into now . These are examples that the International War museum in the uk has on display. They have a blanket that theyve turned into a cape for a child. Once the blanket has gotten tattered they can trim it down and reuse it because, remember, coats are some of your biggest and most expensive items as far as coupons go. Womens skirt suit was made from an old mans suit. This could be something that you picked up at a swap, but a lot of women are working to redesign fabric or things that they already had. Necessary fashion comes into play a lot in the uk with the air raids. So we have air raid fashion. Luminous flowers are broaches that women would buy to put on the outside of their clothing that you would essentially charge all day long in the sun and then at night or when air raids are going on when you dont have lights you can have the broach so you can kind of see where people are. Same thing goes with the glow in the dark buttons, sometimes they would be sewn into the pajamas that they wore or robes that they had so that way you can kind of see where people are without kind of standing out too much. I havent been, but in england they have a pretty fabulous war museum and they had a great exhibit on fashion on the ration and they had really great things that becky and i couldnt explain to you are better, so we have one more quick video for you. Im historian in london. Were here in the fashion on the ration exhibition in an area called functional fashion. In this section we have an example of a gas mask handbag. You can see that this is a very stylish attractive solution for that essential wartime piece of equipment that all civilians were issued with, a respirator, because of the much feared prospect of chemical warfare. The handbag itself has got a compartment at the bottom with a drawer where the respirator sits and in the top theres space for your ordinary day to day possessions. These were really stylish Attractive Solutions to carry around your gas masks. In this section we also see other examples of how fashion adapted to wartime dangers. We have an example of a siren suit, an all in one zip up garment that people could jump into to run out into the air raid shelter in. We have examples of luminous buttons which were sold to pin on to your clothing so that you could be seen in the blackouts because of a rise in collisions between pedestrians and cars. Both at work and at home the war changed how people dressed. People now had to wear practical clothes, but they still wanted in many cases to look stylish. Okay. So all of you ladies who feel like you have tons of things in your purse, you probably dont have a gas mask with you, but what a cool way to show innovation into your every day kind of items. At this point wed like to open up to any questions that you might have. Good morning. I was curious to know which museum in england one could visit the exhibit on fashion. We didnt go. Oh, no, we didnt go. No, from the research. Which is the museum its the International War museum. International. Thank you. Yeah. Absolutely. Imperial. Imperial war museum. Thank you. Great presentation. Thank you. Im just thinking in the midwest and the u. S. And especially with grb and the mennonites, were there religious exemptions for clothing . I dont think so. We didnt find anything like that that said the exceptions that we had, the mail carriers, the police officers, but we didnt find anything on religious exemptions at all. But remember in the u. S. They are not rationed clothing, its just new clothing cant have those things. Does that make sense, those kinds of restrictions. [ inaudible question ] well, in those those are dresses or clothing that you buy in the store as made. Does that make sense . So not what youre making at home. They might not have access to as much fabric, but its just what youre purchasing. Thats why the manufacturers were the ones who were getting in trouble because theyre making the clothing. Thats a good question. Following up on her question, just like we saw a resurgence in Victory Gardens and canning, did we see a resurgence either in the u. S. Or the uk with those oldfashioned traditional womens roles of weaving and i dont evan auto know what the right terminology is because they do a lot of mending, that was really huge, especially when it can a im to nylons, that was one thing that they tried to repair and fix as much as you could. I didnt find a whole lot of like extra no, but they talked about how core sets sort of started going by the wayside, thats extra fabric, thats extra points, and, hey, without one i can breathe. So that was one of the things that we noticed that kind of fell away were corsets, which, yay. Did you look into how much, if at all, this led to or the extent to which this led to the creation of new materials, stuff like polyesters and things . The bulk of what [ inaudible question ] the bulk of what they were restricting in the u. S. Was wool fabrics and things, thats why your shoes that had cotton and cork werent on rags ration. We didnt get into how they explored new materials. One thing that happened is that the hem lines never went back down. So if you notice that. Polyesters were later. Yeah. Great presentations both. Two quick questions. Did the u. S. Ever find another source of silk or no. Okay. All right. No. And then the followup on the first presentation about food, did they just assume that everyone knew how to sew or did you find evidence that womens groups or Community Groups had courses and things to teach women how to repair their clothes and such . I didnt find a lot of propaganda to imply like this is how you do it, but in the uk specifically that womens group that worked together, they had a lot of meets where they would help each other. I dont know if you can speak for the u. S. I do know from experience my my 96yearold grand motherinlaw had a son who was growing at the more than three shoes per year rate and she talked about how they did a lot of swapping, like with other people at their church that had kids or whatever, they would swap clothes because i know that she was like his foot was just growing so fast i couldnt i needed more than three pair of shoes for him. So i think there was a lot of cooperative among like maybe Church Groups or even neighborhood neighborhoods. This is a little bit more of a comment, but i had previously known that in the late 40s Christian Dior debuted a lot of looks with higher hem lines and cinched waists and i hadnt made the connection between that and wartime ration thing. I was curious if at this time people maybe would sell clothing they werent using, you know how we have secondhand stores, was that like an advent at this time or was that a new a new type of business that people got into . Especially the shoes. There were secondhand shoes. Whole stores of them. Yeah, whole stores of secondhand shoes especially. I can imagine that they were probably doing the same thing with clothing as well. Because, again, this whole week we have talked about the theme of everyone doing their part and so, you know, even down to fashion, even your clothes, hey, if im not using this anymore in my closet, my child has outgrown it, let me give it to somebody who can use it. So we do see that. Any exceptions made for people who lived in colder climates for longer periods of time . Not that weve seen, which is i mean, especially the country is so huge, i mean, everyone is going to have different things, but in the uk the only exceptions were occupational based. And the boys, like we said, until youre 13 boys in the uk had to wear shorts. Yearround. Well, its cold. Yearround. So, sorry, kids, wear long socks. Yeah. I wonder if after the war if women just ran out and shopped until their hearts were content. They said the rags thing is over, weve going for long enough, were going to refill our wardrobes. Once you get into the 50s i suppose it does open up quite a bit, yeah. Any more questions . I think thats it. All right. Lets thank becky and irene for their presentations. [ applause ] American History tv products are now available at the new cspan online store. Go to cspanstore. Org to see whats new for American History tv and check out all of the cspan products. All week were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Lectures in history, american artifacts, reel america, the civil war, orlando histories, the presidency and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan 3. Sunday night on q a theoretical physicist michi michio kaku talks about our destiny beyond earth and achieving digital immortality. Digital immortality takes everything known about you on the internet, your digital footprint, your credit card records, what movies you see, what wines you like to buy, what countries you visit, your videos, your pictures, your audiotapes and creates a profile thats digitized which will last forever. When you go to the library of the future you will not take out a book about winston churchill, you will talk to winston churchill. Sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. American history tv continues now with a discussion on innovations in art during world war ii. We heard about propaganda cartoons, Norman Rockwell paintings and an strukt expressionist art, a 1940s and 50s movement that included american painters Jackson Pollock and mark rothko. Healed by friends of the National World war ii memorial, this is close to an hour