‘A fur coat and a blunted vocabulary are misfits’: Representations of Munitionettes’ Fashion and Class during the First World War

Abstract

This article offers new insights into the way fashion was used to identify and disseminate discourses surrounding patriotism and class during the First World War. Official directives encouraged frugality; thus any extravagance was deemed to be unpatriotic. Wartime narratives targeting the alleged disconnect between women and the reality of war were depicted in satirical cartoons. Upper-class women were depicted wearing expensive, new, ‘ragged’ clothes, whereas lower-class munition workers faced accusations of profligacy exemplified by the wearing of fur coats, previously out of their financial reach. Expensive furs had historically been considered the preserve of the wealthy and royal echelons of society. Therefore, the wearing of such garments, even if made from cheaper pelts, by lower-class female factory workers led to assumptions of their impropriety. Cartoons depicted consumer behaviour in terms of class, which further cemented the trope of the fur-wearing munitionette profiting from the war. The caricatures analysed in this article are contrasted with a consideration of the actual purchases made by working-class women, to add a more nuanced interpretation of the hyperbolic condemnation of munition workers during the First World War.