---
node: fashion_world_wars_britain
type: fashion
slug: world_wars_britain_fashion
title: "Fashion in early 20th-century Britain"
lead: "In the first half of the 20th century British dress shed the corset and simplified: Edwardian formality gave way to the easy 1920s flapper look, and two world wars brought practical, rationed \"Utility\" clothing."
published: 2026-07-28
updated: 2026-08-15
image_file: world_wars_britain_fashion.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Make-do_and_Mend_Art.IWMPST14947.jpg"
image_author: "UK Board of Trade"
image_license: "Public domain"
change: "Deepened all three sections for SEO deepening wave 10; also removed ASCII double quotes, which the siblings did not carry"
previous_hash: "61fca8e2c71e5940f9bb7752f9a1fb1529a596f950b0601657eaf70489b572b5"
requester: internal
reason: "One of the thinnest pages in the period_fashion_en cluster; the en-us edition alone carried ASCII double quotes against decision(localization), so that fix is en-us only"
---

## Overview

Two wars and the decades between them stripped British dress down. The corseted Edwardian silhouette went, skirts rose, menswear settled into the lounge suit, and in the Second World War the state took direct control of what could be made — the most thorough government intervention in British clothing there has ever been.

## Key garments and style

The Edwardian S-bend corset and enormous hats disappeared during and after the First World War, as women entered war work and needed clothes that allowed it. The 1920s produced the dropped waist, the shortest skirts yet worn, and cropped hair.

The Second World War brought rationing by coupon from 1941 and the Utility scheme, marked CC41, the following year. Utility clothing was made to controlled specifications from controlled cloth, and austerity regulations capped the number of pleats, pockets, buttons and the depth of hems — so wartime garments are identifiable by what they lack. Leading couturiers were commissioned to design Utility ranges, which put good design into mass-produced clothes for the first time.

Make do and mend, the government's mending campaign, is the period's other legacy, and it survived the war as a habit in households that had learned it.

## Transition

Dior's New Look of 1947, with its extravagant use of cloth, was a direct repudiation of all this, and rationing did not end in Britain until 1949.