What Did Women Wear in Wartime Germany?

 

I ask myself this question all the time when I look through original images from the period: "What did women wear in wartime Germany???" Seriously, what did they wear? I ask this because I know there is a split between the fantasy created in the magazines and period publications, the real life captured in photos, and then the moments of life that were never captured on film, on or paper and only exist in a memory that now no longer exists. I guess, what I really want to know, is what were women wearing in the moments that were never recorded in photos? Those moments of real life. 

Magazine photos and illustrations show the ideal, the best of the best and are plucked from the imagination where anything is possible. They offer a great tool for studying the ideal silhouette and it is possible that those very images inspired the very women I am trying to study and emulate. If they inspired them, can't they inspire me? I am sure that those magazine fashions probably never made it into the closets of the average woman though. So do magazines really make a good research tool in answering the questions" What did women wear in wartime Germany???" I don't think so because how many women actually had access to purchase or recreate exactly those looks? Probably not many. 

Photos - Family photos, I think, I better than magazine images in trying to figure out the question of "What were they wearing? because photos capture real life moments just as they are happening. they catch that loving embrace, that joyful family reunion, and then they also capture the moments of great despair when a photographer catches a group of refugees fleeing their bombed-out homes.  Photos can capture both the best and the worst. However, photos can be staged. Photos only over a glimpse of the larger picture.  Thinking of my own photos - I only photo the moments that are worth catching on film. . . When I look at family photos from the period, are these the best moments? Are these people wearing their best? Were these women caught off guard while peeling potatoes and wearing their aprons? What moments are these photos capturing and are these photos answering the question "What did women wear in wartime Germany??" 

I think what bothers me the most is that there is no way the question can be definitively answered.  I think when I try to answer it, I am taking a best guess with the materials that I have before me. Some of the materials are better than others no doubt and some of the materials offer a better, or more authentic, look than others. Really, I think all I am doing is taking shot in the dark and hoping that I hit the mark. Photos only show one family or one individual, at one particular point in time. Can that one photo be used as a sample to determine what most women are wearing or does that photo only support what that one woman was wearing? 

When it comes to answering the question, there is no one answer, and maybe that is why this question is so hard to answer!  I get a lot of heat and negative response from what I do in trying to answer this question. Part of it is because there was a lot of awful stuff that took place and there are some who believe that this part of history should be covered up and never taken out of storage again. The other part is because they think I only show a rosy or over idealized image of what these women looked like. When I try to recreate a look, I try to use original source materials - mostly photos - and I try to recreate the hair and match my clothes to the original model as much as possible. When I cannot determine a certain element within that photo, I fill in the gaps with other period source documentation and take a good guess as what I am actually looking at. 

I often recreate looks that are found in a more domestic setting, and not a refugee on the move. I was told once that my impression of a German civilian was "too clean" and "too idealized". Should I have rolled in some dirt? Should I have tattered my clothes? Should I have left a little more dirt under my nails?  Not all women in wartime Germany were the same. Some experienced the horrors of war more up close than others. Not all women lived in the countryside and not all lived in an urban apartment. Not every woman was a tattered refugee, and not every woman stayed in her own home trying to hold it all together.   Women in wartime Germany were so diverse and is it possible that there is no solid answer to the question "what did women wear in wartime Germany?"

**this post was originally published on my old blog The Ugly Dame and has been transferred here**