The 1940s

Long, fluid, body-skimming evening gowns shaped by draping and pleating rather than boning - the decade's glamour line, kept alive by Paris couturiers and Hollywood costume departments alike.

The late-decade move from squared utility shoulders to sloping shoulders, longer skirts, and a cinched waist - the slow build-up to, and messy aftermath of, Dior's 1947 New Look.

High-waisted, wide-legged trousers worn with a tucked-in blouse or sweater - the silhouette that moved women's trousers from Hollywood novelty to everyday working wardrobe.

A close-fitting knit sweater over a structured, pointed bra and a high-waisted skirt - Hollywood's pin-up silhouette, built almost entirely on what was worn underneath.

Squared, padded shoulders over a narrow waist and a short, slim skirt stopping just below the knee - the defining wartime shape, and one dictated as much by fabric regulations as by taste.

MGM's star costume designer, who left the studio in 1941 to open his own Beverly Hills salon - taking Joan Crawford's famous padded shoulders with him into American ready-to-wear.

The Californian designer who spent the war years dressing films at 20th Century Fox, then came back to New York in 1949 with the practical, layered, travel-ready ideas that would make her a founder of American sportswear.

The American designer who used wartime restrictions as a design brief - the Popover dress, ballet flats for the street, and the practical, mass-produced sportswear that became the 'American Look.'

The couturier who, as head of the Paris couture trade body, talked the German occupiers out of moving French fashion to Berlin - and whose house trained both Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain during the war.

The Paris couturière whose hand-pleated silk jersey gowns turned draping into sculpture - and who openly defied the occupiers, showing a collection in the colours of the French flag.

The royal dressmaker who helped design Britain's government-backed Utility clothing in 1942 - and then made Princess Elizabeth's 1947 wedding dress, paid for partly with clothing coupons.

Trained at Molyneux and then at Lucien Lelong alongside Christian Dior, Balmain opened his own house in 1945 - and his debut collection of long, bell-shaped skirts got to the postwar silhouette more than a year before the New Look.

Folded-down ankle socks, saddle shoes or loafers, a pleated skirt and an oversized 'sloppy joe' sweater - the uniform of the teenage girls who screamed for Sinatra, and one of the first real teenage fashion looks.

A full skirt gathered onto a waistband, borrowed from Alpine folk dress - a pre-war craze squeezed small by wartime fabric rules, still sewn at home from remnants, then let loose again in the years after 1945.

A short, waist-length military jacket with a fitted band at the waist, adopted by the US Army in 1944 and named after its most famous wearer - and one of the clearest routes by which uniform shapes crossed into postwar women's clothes.

A fitted jacket with a short flared frill below the waist - a small detail that made a waist look smaller under square wartime shoulders, then grew fuller and rounder as the decade turned toward the New Look.

Shorts and a top, often in one piece, sometimes with a button-on skirt - the practical summer leisure outfit of the 1940s, for gardens, beaches, bicycles and the 'holidays at home' of the war years.

A one-piece, zip-front boiler suit designed to be pulled on over nightclothes when the air-raid siren sounded - a wartime practicality that briefly became genuine fashion.

A net or crocheted bag holding long hair at the nape of the neck - a Victorian idea revived just before the war, and one of the easiest pieces of 1940s fashion to make at home.

A heart-shaped neckline above a fitted bodice and a long, softly falling skirt - the romantic dance dress of the war years, worn to forces dances and weddings when most other clothes had turned plain and practical.

A knee-length day dress in printed rayon crepe, with gathered shoulders, a V or sweetheart neckline, and a gently flared skirt - the decade's everyday dress, and its most copied one today.

A length of fabric wrapped and knotted around the head - factory safety gear, a disguise for unwashed hair, and in occupied Paris, an act of quiet defiance.

A single-breasted jacket and knee-length skirt, cut to government fabric limits and carrying Britain's CC41 label - the wartime suit that proved rationed clothes could still be well designed.

A shoe with a solid sole running from heel to toe, often in cork or wood - born of material shortages, and one of the decade's most widely worn shoe shapes.

Knickers, slips and petticoats on the ration - plain utility underwear without embroidery, rayon locknit instead of silk, service-issue knickers nicknamed 'passion killers', and a great deal of homemade lingerie cut from whatever fabric came to hand.

Printed cotton sacks for flour, sugar, and animal feed, designed to be turned into dresses, aprons, and children's clothes once emptied - the fabric of rural and working-class home sewing.

A tightly woven, hard-wearing twill with a steep diagonal rib - claimed first by uniforms and raincoats during the war, and the fabric of choice for 1940s slacks and suits in both wool and rayon.

DuPont's new wonder fibre launched as women's stockings in 1940, vanished into parachutes by 1942, and came back in 1945-46 to literal riots - with painted-on 'stockings' filling the gap in between.

Surplus and salvaged parachutes, in silk or nylon, recut into wedding dresses, lingerie, and blouses - the decade's most romantic example of making do.

Scarves and dress fabrics printed with wartime slogans, flags, and patriotic motifs - most famously the London silk house Jacqmar's propaganda scarves - turning morale into something you could wear.

The regenerated-cellulose fibre that stood in for silk and much of wool during the war - the fabric the decade's tea dresses, blouses, and linings were actually made from.

With metal diverted to the war effort, zippers became scarce and button counts were capped - pushing garment closures back toward snaps, hooks, side plackets, and buttons in wood, glass, and plastic.

The home techniques - unpicking, turning, re-cutting, darning, and reknitting - that kept wartime wardrobes going, and turned a husband's old suit into his wife's new one.

Padding sewn into jackets, coats, dresses, and even blouses to build a broad, squared shoulder line - the construction detail that carried the decade's whole silhouette.

When Japan's advance in 1942 cut the Allies off from most of their natural rubber, elastic all but vanished from civilian foundation garments - and girdles went back to lacing, boning, hooks, and clever cutting.

How the 1940s bra got from the soft, sized cups of the 1930s to the projecting, circle-stitched shape of the 1950s - built from seaming and stitching rather than wire or stretch, because the war had taken both.

Britain's Utility scheme and America's L-85 order set legal limits on fabric, pleats, pockets, trims, and hem widths - effectively a government-issued construction rulebook for a whole decade's clothes.

From June 1941 every item of clothing in Britain cost coupons as well as money, on an allowance that shrank as the war went on - the system that shaped how a whole generation of women shopped, sewed, and dressed.

Four years of German occupation cut Paris off from the rest of the fashion world - couture survived, for a fraught clientele, while ordinary Parisiennes answered shortages with towering hats, wooden soles, and a streak of defiance.

Millions of women moved into factories, shipyards, and the services during the war - bringing overalls, trousers, headscarves, and practical hair into everyday life, and a famous poster that almost nobody saw at the time.

With Paris cut off from 1940, American stores, editors, and designers had to stand on their own for the first time - and the result was the 'American Look,' Press Week, and the start of New York as a fashion capital.

In 1945, with fabric still scarce, the Paris couture houses dressed more than two hundred wire dolls in miniature couture and sent them touring - a fundraiser that doubled as Paris announcing it was back.

A deliberately excessive youth style born in Black and Latino communities, worn by young women as well as men, that ran straight into wartime fabric restrictions - and into the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles.