The Peplum Jacket

A peplum is a short, flared piece attached at or just below the waist of a jacket, blouse, or dress, so that it flips out over the hips. It sounds like a minor detail, but it does a surprising amount of work in 1940s clothes, and it's one of the details that changes most visibly as the decade moves from war to peace.

The word comes from the Greek peplos, a draped ancient garment, and peplums had come and gone many times before, including on Victorian bodices. What made them so right for the 1940s was geometry. The wartime silhouette was built on broad, squared shoulders and a fairly narrow skirt. A peplum flaring out just below a nipped waist gives the eye a clear break and a contrasting shape - wide at the shoulder, small at the waist, a little flare at the hip - so the waist looks smaller than it really is. On a suit jacket it could be a neat, tailored band; on a rayon crepe dress or blouse it was often softer, gathered or draped, sometimes cut on the bias.

During the war years, peplums tended to stay short and restrained. Fabric was limited by rationing and by government rules, and a big, full flounce would have been hard to justify. So wartime versions are often small, sharply cut, and sometimes created with seaming or darts rather than a separate piece of fabric - flattering, but economical. Hollywood liked them too: a peplum suit with big shoulders was a standard look for a confident screen heroine of the early 1940s.

After 1945, the peplum starts to grow. As shoulders softened and waists got tighter in the postwar softening, jacket peplums became fuller, rounder, and more flared, sometimes padded or stiffened to push out over the hips. That's the direct route to Christian Dior's 1947 "Bar" suit, with its rounded, padded basque flaring over a full skirt - the jacket at the centre of the New Look. So if you want to watch the 1940s silhouette change in a single garment, the peplum jacket is a good one to follow: small and strict in wartime, soft and rounded by the end.