By Katy Conover

As discussed in the previous post, the early years of World War I were espousing a unified visual aesthetic between illustration, photograph, and text that started to deteriorate as the war progressed.  Nineteen sixteen was the year in which the disunity was at its greatest.

Vogue, January 15, 1916

In this year, the fashionable silhouette in illustrations had shifted to a more ‘traditional’ feminine shape with a natural waistline, fitted bust, and a wide skirt in the pages of Vogue. 

The Queen, March 4, 1916

 Even The Queen’s illustrations were supporting this image.  To add to this, the text form 1916 was promoting a youthful silhouette.  The Queen remarked that ‘[a]ll the new models are extraordinarily youthful for youth is privileged in France, and is almost tyrannical when it is a question of fashion.’[1]  Vogue also mentioned that, ‘[t]he “young thing” appears everywhere, an astounding combination of worldliness and ignorance […] a wild mixture of Paris futurism, the primitives, and a little rouge […].  She is feverishly interested in two things, herself and her clothes.’[2]  Note that there is no mention of the war here.  In this year, the disunity becomes blatant.  Considering Vogue’s focus on Paris, the assumption would be that the magazine would also focus more information on the war and the fashion industry in Paris.  However, this was not the case.  For 1916, the war and fashion were still separate issues.  In the March 15, 1916 ‘Paris Openings’ issue, the main fashion article, ‘The Tale of the Paris Openings’ did not mention the war at all in the article.[3]  Even Vogue’s editor, Edna Woolman Chase’s autobiography refers to the war with nonchalance: ‘in the trenches our circulation was second only to the Saturday Evening Post.  At first I couldn’t believe it, but I suppose in a way it was natural.  Vogue is about women and their frills and furbelows; it is a vastly different diet from mud and uniforms, boredom and death.’[4] 

In contrast, by June 1916, women were being told in Vogue that the fashionable body would be wearing a slimmer silhouette despite being shown the contrary:

some of the smartest houses are advocating the slender silhouette, there is every reason to expect that limp frocks will be demanded by the clients themselves, and the society, like the little Quaker maiden, will “rip the hoops out of its gown.”  The “slender” silhouette does not mean a return to tight skirts—not at all.  In fact, skirts will remain ample, but the fulness [sic] will be softly and limply disposed.[5]

 Additionally, in The Queen’s March 4, 1916 issue, Mrs. Jack May lamented that:

[w]omen just now seem to be divided into two communities—those who are too panicky to dare to spend money, even when on necessary dress requirements, the others paying not the slightest attention to the pleas for economy and spending as freely as ever […].[6]

Yet in the same article she contradicts her previous statement:

And afterwards, when this wearisome, long-drawn-out war ends, we shall look back on having been taught the valuable lesson of how to administer a dress allowance with care […]; also the realisation how, given the proper care and intelligent attention, it is possible to dress well and at the same time economically.[7]

However, M.E. Clarke’s November article ‘Causerie de Paris,’ lamented that, ‘nothing but cloth is being used, and never have the skirts been wider.  They look less wide in effect because there are so many pleats, but they take an enormous amount of material.’[8]  It is notable that the silhouette was supposed to look ‘less wide,’ but the dresses still required an ‘enormous amount of material.’

Vogue, November1, 1916

Vogue, November1, 1916

In these illustrations from Vogue on November 1, 1916, the ‘Straight Way of Paris’ shows the ‘less wide’ skirt, but it still appears to be just as full as the earlier versions.

Vogue, July 1, 1916

 In this illustration, the long tea gown with the kimono-style sleeves did not appear to be using moderation in the least.

Vogue, June 1, 1916

Vogue, August 15, 1916

However, when examining the photographs from this year, the dissimilarities are obvious.  Putting the earlier illustrations from Vogue’s June 1, 1916 issue alongside a photograph from August 1, 1916, one can observe Adorno’s montage at work.  It is through these seemingly incongruous images that a more complete picture of the fashionable body becomes evident.

This image shows the beginning of the transition towards the idea of unity as the illustrated examples here more closely mirror the illustrated ones, which both follow the ‘slender silhouette’ mentioned in the text.  However, it should be noted that the above text from June 1916 does not seem to be made visually relevant until these examples in October and November of 1916.

Vogue, November 1, 1916

Vogue, February 1, 1917

In the final two years of the war, the magazines introduced the ‘Barrel Silhouette,’ which reintroduced the narrow silhouette of the 1914, and was almost the opposite fashionable body from that of 1916.  In Vogue’s UK edition from Early April 1917, ‘[t]here are just three things one can wear in town this spring,–a tailored suit, a one-piece dress, or a dress with a coat.’[9]  This was supported by the above Illustration in which all of these women are wearing one of the examples listed in the Vogue quotation above.  Even The Queen weighed in: ‘[t]he rule is a tailor-made, and, if not, the very simplest of frocks.’[10]

Vogue, April 1, 1918

 However, unity was not completely seamless.  In this example from the ‘Paris Openings,’ April 1, 1918, the narrower silhouette only reflected a simplicity in external shape while the internal line remained complex.  The three dresses at the top of the page all have multiple layers and the dresses on either end both have kimono sleeves all requiring more fabric than would be necessary if simplicity and thrift were the real goals.  All of these dresses have complex necklines requiring extra fabric—such as the ‘scarf’ neckline in the top left illustration.  Additionally, these dresses have an internal complexity, which cannot be conveyed by the silhouette alone such as the illustration on the lower right which has a gathered neckline, a waistband with a large appliqué insert on the front, and a split overskirt with a longer underskirt.

The introduction of the ‘Barrel Silhouette’ was the moment when the illustrations and the photographs, especially, began to merge into a similar silhouette.

Vogue, January 15, 1918

Vogue, August 1, 1917

 Here the dresses these society women are wearing mirror the illustrated garments.

It is important to note that after America’s entry into the war, the silhouette began to unify across the three types of sources.  The only explanation for this shift comes from historian Elizabeth Miner King in 1917 in which, ‘[w]ar conditions have forced the business of the importation of wearing apparel from Paris to the United States almost to the wall.  Therefore American designers have had to supply an industrial demand in the clothes line.’[11]  The entry of the US into the war seems to have influenced the ‘look’ of the fashionable body across the different sources.  However, this particular change needs further exploration.

Despite this, it is important to emphasize that at this moment, the montage was reaffirming unity.  In August 1917, Vogue seems to also be integrating the war into the fashionable body with the article titled ‘The Fashions of Paris Lead the Simple Life’ with the subheading: ‘Paris Is in No Mood for Gay Colors and Amazing Silhouettes; Wartime Frocks Must Be Simple of Line and Quiet of Color—but They Are Allowed All the Charm They Want.’[12]  Even Vogue changed the name of its regular article ‘Smart Fashions for Limited Incomes’ to ‘Dressing on a War Income’ in the February 1, 1918 issue—a change which occurred in the British edition Early March 1918—this change did not affect the main fashion content about the Paris designers.  As reflected in the shift from a complex silhouette to a complex internal line, fashion seems to have conformed to the demands for simplicity of silhouette during the war.  However, it must be reiterated that this was more a shift from a complex silhouette to a complex internal line.  It was this unified montage which has led Francois Boucher to remark that ‘[t]he 1914-18 war left women mistresses of their own fashions for four years by freeing them from their dependence on couturiers… liberated from their enslavement to the demands of the couture at exactly the time when new needs spurred them to look for more convenience and comfort in clothing.’[13]   And by 1918, Richard Barry had hoped this change would, ‘lift us, as a nation, from the semi-barbarism of clothes-silliness to a higher aesthetic plane of clothes-adornment.’[14]  Regardless of the ‘success’ of this statement, the unity achieved is significant as it is creating a unified fashionable body for women—a unity that was absent in the early years of the war.  In short, the fashions in 1917 and 1918 seemed to have conflated into a unified visual aesthetic, which firmly established a hegemonic visual culture, which led to a fashionable body more unified in silhouette than was evident in 191