Susan L. Carruthers

Demob Fashion: Out of Uniform and Into Civvies

Saturday 11 October
Unitarian Chapel
3.00pm

Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, the ‘demob suits’ issued to British servicemen have become iconic. As a token of official gratitude, veterans received not just a jacket and trousers, but the ‘full monty’ – a whole new wardrobe. 

Susan Carruthers, author of Making Do: Britons and Refashioning of the Postwar World, revisits these postwar garments, placing them in the wider context of a worldwide textile famine. 

Why did a debt-ridden government choose to compensate servicemen with garments? And why didn’t servicewomen receive something comparable? In austerity Britain, clothing wasn’t just a material necessity but a symbolic currency, in which some were rewarded at others’ expense.

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Tickets £10.00
includes refreshments

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History Festival at a Glance

Sunday 28 September