7.  Wearing the Trousers – During World War I

A wonderful photography exhibit entitled Fashion & Freedom will be opening at the Manchester Art Gallery in the United Kingdom this coming May. The photographs represent so much of women in history that we are including a sneak peek for all of you who won’t be traveling there to see the show. The photos on view are of women at work on the home-front during the First World War, driving buses and ambulances, working in factories, making weapons and ammunition. As necessity often becomes the mother of invention, women’s fashion was abruptly altered from corsets and skirts to trousers and headscarves.

While these photographs are of women at work on another continent, it was no less true of women during wartime in our own country. World War I brought nearly three million women into the food, textile and war industries by 1918. As our men went off to war, women were forced to take on new rolls. It was the women who worked as streetcar conductors, radio operators and in the steel mills. In addition to new fashion, there was a new vocabulary, as women working farms were referred to as farmerettes, and women who joined the armed forces were known as yeomanettes. With this new way of living and working, women now had their own money and became increasingly independent. Women’s history abounds in the exhibit Fashion & Freedom.