WWII Conservation Restrictions

Last night I was engaging my love of vintage dressmaking while glancing through Blueprints of Fashion: Home Sewing Patterns of the 1940s when I came across a detailed section outlining clothing conservation restrictions during war-time America. And it got me thinking about the intense rationing and conservation efforts undergone by the homefront during World War II.

It wasn’t just clothing after all. Indeed, the American public made a conscious attempt to conserve just about everything: food, metal, cloth, dyes, food, fuel oil, rubber all come to mind. Those that stayed behind engaged in a united effort to halt consumption and maximize their conservation of resources.

While I am most certainly tired of war. We engage in far too many social (not to mention military) wars: a war against poverty, a war on drugs, a war on terrorism etc., and I don’t mean to encourage us to engage in yet another social war.

Still, aren’t we’re fighting? We’re fighting big corporations who would rather fill our landfills and poison our water than experience a drop in profitability. We’re fighting a government who supports these corporations with huge tax breaks while it can’t even provide medical care to its population or ensure that women are given a suitable maternity leave. We’re fighting ourselves too, and our constant desire for stuff.

We need to come together as a nation in an effort to stop consuming and start conserving. Perhaps we can look to the women on the homefront who made every effort to use everything, conserve, recycle and repurpose in the name of victory. The difference is that much of WWII’s conservation restrictions were imposed by the government and not by the people. (Sadly, don’t we know by now that the two are no longer synonymous?)

Clothing

During World War II, access to cloth–specifically silk and nylon which were used for military purposes–was severely limited. Designers and manufacturers were required to uphold certain standards of conservation with a few exceptions for maternity wear, bridal wear and clothing for persons of abnormal size. Hem circumference was limited to 72″ and bias-cut sleeves were outright banned.

Home sewers were encouraged to refashion existing clothing to suit new purposes. Major pattern manufacturers like McCall’s and Butterick issued patterns that taught women to make new clothing out of their husband’s suits or how to alter an old dress so that it reflected current fashion.

With a little effort we can learn to sew, mend and refashion our families’ clothing. Many sewing centers offer free classes, but if that’s unappealing there’s always second-hand shops offering new-to-you clothing.

Food

Those on the homefront were not wasters of food either. Cooks were encouraged to use all bits of the food they cooked so as not to waste anything. Even cooking fat was saved and brought to drives so that it could be transformed into household soaps and glycerin for military explosives. Nothing was wasted.

Food was limited: particularly meat, sugar and butter. Families were encouraged to grow as much of their food as possible with Victory Gardens. They were also encouraged to preserve food through canning at home. Items that required travel from long distances such as coffee were also rationed as much of the supply was being diverted to troops and ships that would normally transport food were otherwise occupied with transporting military items.

This, too, is something that we can take part in. Plant a victory garden, eat local foods, learn to preserve your harvest and limit your purchase of foods that must travel long distances to arrive in your store. Yes coffee drinkers and sugar eaters, I’m talking to you! (Admittedly, the stuff is delicious and addictive!)

Fuel Oil and Transportation

Likewise fuel oil and gasoline were rationed. Car-sharing was encouraged and people were actively encouraged to lower the thermostat and simply bundle up to stay warm. It’s a simple solution, isn’t it? But it works!

I’ve only briefly touched on WWII’s conservation efforts on the homefront as those efforts encompassed so much more than one blog post can handle.

The nation has come together before in an effort of anti-consumption and pro-conservation. We can and should do it again.

January 7th, 2008