Dressing for Austerity
Subtitle: Aspiration, Leisure and Fashion in Post-War Britain
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 214
ISBN-13: 9781780766287
Subjects: Clothing and dress; Great britain, social life and customs
Description: A new look for austerity ... The coldest winter on record, rationing, successive economic crises, bombed out towns and cities; with some justification 'austerity Britain' in the late 1940s is colored in the popular imagination in tones of drab. Dressing for Austerity shines a light on alternative visions of post-war optimism and aspiration. It traces how, set against the Labour government's philosophy of 'austerity by design' in a climate of post-war idealism, the desire for affordable fashionable clothing, access to leisure, and the health, time and money to enjoy them became totemic symbols of post-war ambition that impelled new strategies of state control and consumer agency. The book examines the immediate post-war period - its politics, its fashions and its people - in new ways and on its own terms as a critical tipping point in the making of modern Britain.--Adapted from dust jacket.