History of Fashion - Mid-twentieth Century

Mid-twentieth Century

The Second World War created many radical changes in the fashion industry. After the War, Paris's reputation as the global center of fashion began to crumble, and off-the-peg and mass-manufactured fashions became increasingly popular. A new youth style emerged in the 1950s, changing the focus of fashion forever. As the installation of central heating became more widespread, the age of minimum-care garments began, and lighter textiles and, eventually, synthetics, were introduced.

In the West, the traditional divide that had always existed between high society and the working class became considered unjustifiable. In particular, a new young generation wanted to reap the benefits of a booming consumer society. Privilege became less blatantly advertised than in the past and differences were more glossed over. As the ancient European hierarchies were overturned, the external marks of distinction faded. By the time the first rockets were launched into space, Europe was more than ready to adopt a quality ready-to-wear garment along American lines—something to occupy the middle ground between off-the-peg and couture. This need was all the more pressing because increases in overheads and raw material costs were beginning to relegate handmade fashion to the sidelines. Meanwhile, rapidly developing new technologies made it increasingly easy to manufacture an ever-improving, high-quality product.

Faced with the threat of a factory-made, fashion-based product, Parisian haute couture mounted its defenses, but to little effect. While the old world was taking its final bow, the changes in fashion were one of the most visible manifestations of the general shake-up in society. Before long, classes of women hitherto restricted to inferior substitutes to haute couture would enjoy a greatly enlarged freedom of choice. Dealing in far larger quantities, production cycles were longer than those of couture workshops, which meant that stylists planning their lines for the twice-yearly collections had to try to guess more than a year in advance what their customers would want. A new authority had taken over—that of the street, constituting a further threat to the dictatorship of couture.