Women's Fashions Streamlined in the Interests of War.
In 1942 the Wartime Prices and Trade Board (WPTB) issued new clothing regulations that, as Thelma Lecocq observed in Maclean's took a "cut at almost everything a woman wears - even to nightgowns". All frills and furbelows, ruffles and ruchings were slashed, so were cuffs, double-breasted fronts and flap pockets on suits. There were to be no more five-yard skirts or voluminous, bell sleeves; negligees and house-coats were lopped off at approximately ankle length; and the nightgown was to give way to the night-shirt. With all unnecessary yardage and detail shorn, fashions would be, as the National Home Monthly put it, "Streamlined for the Duration."
For the purposes of the simplification orders, the home dressmaker was classified as a clothing manufacturer just like the custom dressmaker or tailor. Women's magazines informed their readers of the new clothing regulations, and pattern makers, as shown in this page from the October 1943 issue of Chatelaine, came up with new clean-cut designs and instructions for doing over old frocks. The Consumer Branch of the WPTB issued a series of advertisements under the title "Miracles of Make-Do" that gave Canadian women hints on how to conserve textiles by mending and making over.
The freeze on silk had come in July 1941, and Canadian women who had no large stocks of silk stockings turned to wearing ones made from rayon or from cotton lisle. Towards the end of the war stocks of these were running low and women were going bare-legged or wearing leg paint with an imitation seam line drawn up the back of their legs.
