IT COULD BE SAID THAT FASHION WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OUTBREAK OF WWI

Attempts to tend to the wounds of Archduke Franz Ferdinand were impeded by his layers of clothing, which he liked to be sewn into in order to ensure a perfect fit. By the time they’d managed to cut through his clothes, the Duke had died, and so WWI began...

Did you know these other clothing-related facts about WWI?

Paris saw a fashion craze for jewellery made from fragments of exploded shells.

German underwear was rumoured to be of better quality so Allied troops were ordered to collect samples of enemy underwear from the dead.

WWI introduced the wrist watch for men (previously worn by women only) as pocket watches were impractical in the trenches.

About the Book

Men in khaki and grey squatting in the trenches, women at work, gender bending in goggles and overalls over their trousers, a girl at the Paris theatre in pleated, beaded silk, a bangle on her forearm made from copper fuse wire from the Somme. What people wear matters. Dressed for War is the story of what people on both sides wore on the front line and on the home front through the seismic years of World War I.

Nina Edwards reveals fresh aspects of the war through the prism of the smallest details of personal dress, of clothes, hair and accessories, both in uniform and civilian wear. She explores how, during a period of extraordinary upheaval, a particular preference for a type of perfume or the just-so adjustment to the tilt of a hat, offer insights into the individual experience of men, women and children during the course of World War I.

About the author

Nina Edwards is a writer and cultural critic, whose books include On the Button: The Significance of an Ordinary Item and Offal: A Global History.