Women's Lives and Clothes in WW2 by Lucy Adlington

Author:Lucy Adlington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / General
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2019-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

ON THE DANCE FLOOR

Leisure activities

‘There are about 90,000 officers, trying to have fun; the battles in the desert here are treated like a game’1

Christine Granville, a spy in Cairo

Getting ready for a ball, a party, a disco, a date – these have been features of women’s lives for centuries. The anticipation, anxious decision-making over what to wear, critical review of the final ensemble – dress triumphs, dress disasters – the possibility of romance... The transformative power of clothes cannot be underestimated, turning daily life into something special. During the war, leisure activities such as dancing and sport were crucial to keeping up morale and helping young people in particular let off steam during highly emotionally-charged years. In fact, fun was so important to national and military health, governments devoted considerable resources to promoting mass entertainment, such as the Nazi Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) recreational organisation, designed to stimulate morale among workers.

The desperate need for distraction could be hedonistic, and a live-for-the-moment attitude pushed away morals as well as the horrors of war. Mary Morris, a nurse attending an Allied New Year party in Brussels in 1944, noticed Belgian girls in evening gowns and turban-style headscarves and wondered if the same girls had attended the glittering dinner dances of the German Wehrmacht during occupation. She later saw one girl being chased through the streets of Brussels by a crowd of women who cut off her hair as retribution for such collaboration.2 There were harsh judgements on those who took their fun too far, or with the wrong crowd.

For some war workers, leisure meant a lunchtime music recital, laughing at a radio show, or a quiet moment with a book; others indulged in the escapism of cinema and theatre, a trip to the beach or a spot of sport. Clothes for leisure had their place in war.

Cairo, only two hours away from harsh desert battles was a place of frantic gaiety for Allied civilians and service personnel. Freya Stark, travelling with government propaganda work in 1941, showed off one of the last Molyneux designs bought in Paris before the designer fled Nazi occupation. She said cinemas and restaurants were crowded, ‘and people with arms in slings or bandaged heads were going out to dinner parties.’3 American army auxiliaries in Cairo were forbidden to appear out of uniform even in the evening, so they hid dresses under khaki coats and caps until they reached their destination, such was the desire to dress up for a night out. Germans advancing from El Alamein broadcast the message, ‘Get out your party frocks, we’re on our way!’ Local Egyptian dressmakers dropped English clients to start stitching for a German Victory Ball.4

Chapel Allerton High School girls, glammed up for a dance in an array of shop-bought and home-made evening styles.

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