Maria Davis 1940s to 50s (part 1)

Women in the Workforce

The Bonds Fashion Show 1950

As in the First World War, millions of women entered the workforce in World War II. Once again after the war, men were expected to be the main family providers. Women were told they had no right to work if it took a job from a man who had a family to support.

But unlike the 1920s when unemployment was a serious problem, the government was soon faced by manpower shortages. By the late 1940s women were being asked to return to work, although often on a part-time basis – in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs, and still at only 49 per cent of men’s wages.

Education for girls still focused on domestic science, even though women were now faced with a dual role – wage earner and home-maker. In the 1940s and 1950s, the percentage of married women who worked doubled to 30 per cent. By the late 1950s, there would be more female factory workers than shop assistants or office workers.

Independent Women

Peter Jones fashion (May 1957)

In other ways, the position of women had improved by the time Maria celebrated her twenty-first birthday in 1954 with promotion, getting an exciting new job as section manager.

Thanks to better methods of birth control, families were now smaller, though they remained large among the working class. There was no way Maria was going to follow her mum and have six children! In middle class homes, gas and electric cookers and vacuum cleaners (see Gadgets and Style) multiplied after the war. But in working class homes, housework remained very hard and very manual, and Maria didn’t want to work all day in the store and slave all night at home.

By the 1940s, middle class women had less servants, but still, few wealthier married women went out to work. It remained the lot of working class women at John Lewis, like Maria Davis, to attend their ‘betters’. By the end of the 1950s, half of working class women went out to work.

The ‘New Look’ for Women

Autumn fashion show 1950

Clothing had been strictly controlled during World War II (1939-1945); materials were in short supply and many workers from the fashion industry went to work in war-related industries. Clothes were designed to be hard-wearing and practical, and were mostly styled into short, boxy shapes.

After the war, in 1947, the famous French designer Christian Dior launched a dramatic change of fashion known as the ‘New Look’ – tightly fitting corseted bodices and long, full skirts, often worn with narrow, high heels.

Peter Jones fashion (1957)

Evening wear in the 1940s and 1950s was often worn with long, skin-tight gloves. Glove stretchers made of ivory were often necessary to help squeeze fingers into gloves. Ankle-strap shoes were very fashionable, but for work, wedge-sole shoes, often with soles made of cork or wood, were much more practical. Seamed stockings were made of nylon, a synthetic (man-made) material introduced during the war. It was sheer, hard-wearing,

and much cheaper than silk.

The first nylon stockings went on sale in America in May 1940 and sold out in four days. Nylon, and other synthetic materials like rayon and acrylic, transformed the textile industry, and clothes manufacturing.

Teenage Fashion

Trewin Bros teenage department (1957)

Dior’s ‘new look’ dominated fashion for the rest of the 1940s and 1950s, although from the late 1940s, teenagers – who were increasingly under the influence of American film stars and musicians – began to wear different clothes from the ones their parents wore.

The rise of ready-to-wear clothes in the 1950s transformed fashion from a minority interest into a popular obsession. But even then, poorer families like Maria’s still had a very limited amount of the money they could spend on the latest clothes. Like her mum Beryl, Maria relied on nimble fingers and her trusty sewing kit with scissors, needles, thimble and bodkin (a blunt large-eyed needle).

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