Remembering French Wartime Fashion

I want to commend the staff of the National World War I Museum for their imaginative efforts in 2021 to keep the public interested in the historical importance of the war by presenting imaginative and fresh programs that look at its surprising aspects. I've been meaning to write this article for some time, but the museum's latest special exhibition, Silk and Steel: French Fashion, Women and WWI, which  showed through 11 April 2021, is a perfect example of what I like to see. Obviously intended to attract an audience other than hard-core military history types, Silk and Steel will allow visitors, who may otherwise have never traveled to the museum to learn how deeply connected the war is to our 21st-century culture.

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Part of the WWI Museum's Display

Silk and Steel features original dresses, coats, capes, hats, shoes, and accessories. Topics presented are the evolution of the wartime silhouette, Parisian designers during the war, military uniforms’ influence, women’s uniforms in France and America, war work, economics of fashion, and postwar emancipation. Original clothing and accessories were on loan from many other museums. Here are a few examples:

"Madame Dress" by Jeanne Lanvin

Blouse by Coco Chanel

Smith College Relief Unit Uniform,
Abercrombie and Fitch

French Fashion, Women, and the First World War was organized by Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York. An initial iteration of this exhibition called Mode & Femmes 14–18 was presented at the Bibliothèque Forney in Paris by Bibliocité.