1940s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook, by Charlotte Fiell; intro. By Emmanuelle Dirix. Welbeck, 2021

The third (and, hopefully, not the last?) of this series gives us a lot more information than the first or even the second. We’ve got 36 pages of text, and it goes over the many changes the world went through in this decade. The Second World War changed the economy, there were shortages of materials, Paris was invaded, and there were radical changes in gender roles. Women went from needing pretty dresses for visiting and shopping to needing trousers and overalls so they could safely work in factories and in the defense industries (my mother was an arc welder in the shipyards, so I heard tales of this in first person, too). The shape of skirts went from full to narrow to accomadate fabric rationing. Hems went up, although not as far as in the 20s. Designers, unable to change silhouettes as they usually did for new seasons, concentrated on buttons, trims, and fabric manipulation to make dresses look new.

The rest of the book is the usual feast of period photos, clothing catalogs, designer drawings, and other period ephemera. There are more pages devoted to accessories and lingerie than in the previous two volumes. I’ve got to give this one a full five stars! l