Women's Lives and Clothes in WW2

A unique blend of material culture and memoirs. Interviews with wartime women, including Bletchley veterans and Holocaust survivors.

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What would you wear to war?

How would you dress for a winter mission in the open cockpit of a Russian bomber plane? At a fashion show in Occupied Paris? Singing in Harlem, or on fire watch in Tokyo..?

Ready for Action is a unique, illustrated insight into the experiences of women worldwide during World War Two and its aftermath. The history of ten tumultuous years is reflected in clothes, fashion, accessories and uniforms. As housewives, fighters, fashion designers or spies, women dressed the part when they took up their wartime roles.

Attractive to a general reader as well as interesting to a specialist, Ready for Action focuses on the experiences of British women, then expands to encompass every continent affected by war. Woven through all cultures and countries are common threads of service, survival, resistance and emotion. Historian Lucy Adlington draws on interviews with wartime women, as well as her own archives and costume collection. Well-known names and famous exploits are featured and many never-before-told stories of quiet heroism.

You'll indulge in luxury fashion, bridal ensembles and enticing lingerie, as well as thrifty make-do-and-mend. You'll learn which essential garments to wear when enduring a bomb raid and how a few scraps of clothing will keep you feeling human in a concentration camp.

Ready for Action is richly illustrated throughout, with many previously unpublished photographs, 1940s costumes and fabulous fashion images.

History has never been better dressed.