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Post Info TOPIC: Civilian dress during WW1


Brigadier

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Civilian dress during WW1
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This topic might seem odd, but it does tie in with the monument tank project I described-after all the ceremony would require an audience.  What about suits, hats, womens' clothing etc.?



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Colonel

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Hi,

Try "GOOGLE" images or something like that and put it the things you want (year, female/male, ......), I think could help

DJ



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Brigadier

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Tankcommander wrote:

Hi,

Try "GOOGLE" images or something like that and put it the things you want (year, female/male, ......), I think could help

DJ


 I've done that in the past only to have Google images give me everything, including the kitchen sink.

 



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Colonel

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Also try Google books for magazines of that era. The ads themselves should give you an aidea of the latest fashion.

Bosun Al

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Legend

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The fashion specialists might offer some insights. Here's one

http://www.fashion-era.com/edwardian_photos.htm

Hmmm ... the link "how to date a photograph here" might be useful, haven't checked.

Steve

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Brigadier

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Rectalgia wrote:

The fashion specialists might offer some insights. Here's one

http://www.fashion-era.com/edwardian_photos.htm

Hmmm ... the link "how to date a photograph here" might be useful, haven't checked.

Steve


 That's the material I was looking for.  Thanks.

 



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Rob


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I'm very much into watching early film (pre-1919), and the best is those shot by Mitchell and Kenyon, showing ordinary Edwardian life. One of their best is when they basically set up their film camera on a tram in Nottingham, here in the East Midlands, and kept it rolling as the tram trundled around the city centre, showing Edwardian 'normal' life, especially costume, fascinating.

Anyway, cutting to the question, flat caps a plenty for the men - I was watching documentary footage of the 1911 Siege of Sidney Street, and of the huge crowd of male onlookers they're ALL wearing flat caps, which would be the usual for the working classes - as well as that, a normal three piece suit including waistcoat, shirt a collarless one with collar attached and tie, was standard for, i'd say, 95% of the male population if not more, complete with hat (flat cap, or bowler for clerks, middle classes, upper classes etc). If you go onto flickr.com and type in 'Beamish' and see what comes up - it's one of my favourite places, an open air museum in the UK, and a large proportion of it (farm, town, pit village, railway station and transport system complete with replica B type Busses) is set in 1913 and so are the workers costume - try this set of photos especially http://www.flickr.com/photos/beamishmuseum/sets/72157625085079145/

And this one;

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23689245@N08/sets/72157603880008724/

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Hero

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For civilian figures your best bet would be going on the model railway sites. I do know that the German firm Preisir do lots of figures in various scales. For 1:72 take a look at thier1925 set flight crew and passengers ref 72510. They are made from "hard plastic" and the detail is excellent



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Barry John


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On the important matter of hats:

Whilst I largely agree with Rob and Balders, study of contemporary photographs reveals that the straw boater was not absent from such gatherings, particularly, it seems, during the summer months. In some pics there are quite a lot of them. Also, slightly earlier photos show the bowler (derby) being worn by manual workers - a great many navvies digging canals and laying railway lines seem to have done so in a suit and bowler hat. Perhaps headgear had been more formally divided along class lines by 1914.

A very nice photo of a pub outing in 1914 shows half-a-dozen gents sporting the Homburg, which was popularised by Edward VII and subtly different from the trilby in having the brim turned up all the way round. However, it's entirely possible that antipathy to all things German sent the Homburg the way of the German Band and the German Shepherd Dog* during the War.

I just wonder if the Preiser figures are a shade too modern for a Presentation Tank ceremony. I appreciate that the Edwardian Era ended officially in 1910, but the fashions seem to have hung on, especially in poorer areas, and the Roaring Twenties were quite some way in the future.

I am all ears.

* And the Dachshund.



-- Edited by James H on Monday 20th of June 2011 10:08:19 PM

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Rob


Legend

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Very good point regarding the straw boater and bowler.

May also want to include some figures in 'hospital blues', a blue suit with a white suit and red tie, worn by convalescing soldiers, together with their usual peaked cap

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Rob


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WW1 Hospital Blues - http://www.sutlers.us/acatalog/hospitalblues.jpg

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Legend

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I was thinking dapol railway workmen... a few would work for the crowd and the additional caps can be used for conversions..

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=1161

Prieser did a 1900 set of civilians in typical dress including cyclists in 1/87 perhaps these would work as background figure using false perspective...

Cheerssmile



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Hero

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The other one is Langley Miniature models,they do a wide range of figures in whitemetal covering various era's. Not as good as Preiser but are "passable" for a crowd scene.



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Barry John


Brigadier

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Master Box makes a number of 1/35 figures including civilian ones so I wondered in what they had would work.  I believe yes for at least some of them.



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Lieutenant-Colonel

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If you do some looking on the Great war forum and the WW I section of the Axis History forum you will find some pictures of people in civilian dress. You can also go to a library and start looking through books dealing with this period. You can also log on to alexanderpalace.org and see what the Empress Alexandra and her daughters and other women were wearing. Just recently this site reviewed a new book on Russian fashion. Looking there can guide you to other books on this subject. i hope this is of some help

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Legend

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I'm a fashion student, so if there are any specific queries I might be able to help.

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Commander in Chief

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James H wrote:
 Also, slightly earlier photos show the bowler (derby) being worn by manual workers - a great many navvies digging canals and laying railway lines seem to have done so in a suit and bowler hat. Perhaps headgear had been more formally divided along class lines by 1914.

 even sailors and fishermen were wearing bowlers. They seemed to be some other type than the bowler worn by city people, bankers etc. Less straight, or a smaller brim?

About the class lines: I think that lasted till the early sixties. Workers wearing flat caps, in France and the low countries a blue beret was common sight. But sometimes things were crossing borders, flat caps worn by 'upper class' sport suits, berets by intellectuals or artists. Well, anyhow, we should regret a few things nowadays. Were are the gentlemen lifting elegantly their hat, greeting a lady?



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Legend

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James H wrote:

Also, slightly earlier photos show the bowler (derby) being worn by manual workers - a great many navvies digging canals and laying railway lines seem to have done so in a suit and bowler hat. Perhaps headgear had been more formally divided along class lines by 1914.

I just wonder if the Preiser figures are a shade too modern for a Presentation Tank ceremony. I appreciate that the Edwardian Era ended officially in 1910, but the fashions seem to have hung on, especially in poorer areas, and the Roaring Twenties were quite some way in the future.


 

The suit was the standard form of dress for men in the latter half of the nineteenth century and on through to the 60s, when social norms changed as more daring young people rejected their parents' ways.

The suit was not specifically a sign of smartness in the way we see it now - it was the ordinary, everyday clothing of the working man, and, in nicer cloth and cut, the casualwear of wealthier gentlemen - for whom morning dress with thigh-length frock coat was their formal attire.

The wearing of the suit as we know it, originally known as the lounge suit and later as the business suit (after Americans adopted it for office wear), grew in the later years of the 19th century, until it was commonplace by the early 20th. Bowlers do seem to have been quite popular amongst working men, perhaps because they looked smarter than a flat cap and showed a link to those of higher status, but a good-quality bowler, properly shellacked, would have given the bonce some protection, rather like the modern-day hard hat; remember, the bowler was originally devised as a riding hat, to look stylish whilst being strong enough to protect the head.

As for headgear being divided along class lines by 1914? Well, for gentlemen the formal attire would be a topper, perhaps a straw boater for leisure (by a riverside, naturally), whilst the flat cap and bowler would be worn by working men - the bowler, perhaps, for the better-heeled working class, foremen and the like? I would expect professional men to wear something like a bowler or homburg, probably.

We nowadays tend to associate the bowler with city types, with pinstripe suit, umbrella and briefcase, but I think this will be a style which probably only came in about the thirties at a guess.

Morning dress was still worn by men as formal attire until the early thirties - menswear did not change so radically as womenswear in the twenties. We should also bear in mind the generation gap, as older people would tend to retain a more conservative appearance, falling some years behind the changing fashions of the 1900s-1920s. (see Downton Abbey, the excellent Maggie Smith as the Dowager Lady Grantham, and compare her high-necked floor-length gowns and indoor hat-wearing with the attire of the Grantham daughters)

If hairstyles are of interest to anyone, I understand that the bob first became a fashion as early as 1913, although it would not truly become popular until the early 20s. Nonetheless, some women would have bobbed hair (a longer sort of bob, not much above the shoulder) during and just after the war.



-- Edited by TinCanTadpole on Tuesday 3rd of April 2012 09:32:52 PM

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Legend

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Hmmm ... the Tudor sumptuory laws may have regulated headwear, I'm not sure. Good Queen Bess famously presided over a law which required commoners to wear caps - but that was only on Sundays and holidays I'm sure. But yes, it did come down to class and custom I guess. The first man to wear a top hat was much condemned for it. People used to take it all very seriously - I recall dear old Rumpole being frequently castigated over his "awful" hat (which looked fine to me). My Dad always wore a hat when he was out - as did most of his generation. It was a matter of self-respect. I think most of us these days would have a hard time understanding the nuances of it all.

Kieffer, I'm with you on lifting the hat to a lady. I suppose it is still military custom to pay compliment to a lady by saluting? British and Commonwealth Armies and Airforces anyway - where the salute is never given without headwear. I suppose the Navy might be different - one form of compliment from seamen was for them to remove their caps. But once they saluted with their left hands too - I have no idea of their customs really.

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Legend

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For anyone wanting to see plenty of people in 1910s dress, may I suggest British Pathe's Titanic collection - there are lots of bowlers, lots of flat caps, some baker-boy caps (like a flat cap, but with more volume and a button on top) and loads of people wandering around, showing the dress of various classes to good effect.



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