Most of the uniforms that I have been cataloging have been for men. Typically, they follow a pretty consistent style. They all tend to have 4 front pockets (two breast, and two hip), often a 5th pocket on the left hand side between the breast and hip pocket for ye olde pocket watch, and then usually at least one but sometimes two inside pockets at breast height. Typically, there is also a label that says something along the lines of “tailored for Mr. So and So Aug. 25/47”. This label is usually located inside the inner breast pocket. However, among all these (seemingly thousands) of men’s’ uniforms the occasional female uniform does pop up.
The first time I examined one it was a Canadian Women’s Army Corps uniform from 1952, standard issue. It had everything, the skirt, shirt, tie, and jacket were all there. On the jacket, the collar pins were beautiful tin diamonds with the head of Athena (Goddess of War) imprinted on them. And, like all uniforms, it had a very sharp cut to it which I just absolutely love. So, to properly describe this particular uniform I began to explore it, to probe its depths. Depths, which turned out, to be extremely shallow. As I browsed through the pockets, hoping to find something interesting, I immediately found out that the two front hip pockets of the jacket were FAKE! As a woman myself who deals with the consistent struggle of no pockets or too small pockets I was immediately outraged. Do you mean to tell me, Jacket, that women in 1952 who signed up to work for their country were denied the most basic and simple of all utilitarian clothing compartments? This drives me absolutely bananas! Add to this that there have been arguments made that the lack of pockets, or lack of reasonable pockets, in women’s clothing throughout history is not just a simple oversight, but rather a specific play on male authority. Let me explain.
A long time ago, before Samuel de Champlain sailed to New France, people, at least in England, carried a small bag or “pocket” which was often tied around their waist (the medieval fanny pack) to carry their personal items.[i] As fashion progressed into the late 17th century and everyone realized how handy having a place to put their stuff was, actual pockets began to be sewn into men’s clothing. Women, however, were still wearing their pocket tied around their waist, entirely separate from their clothing and notably underneath all of it where it would not be seen. [ii] By the time the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, men all over Britain and the New World would have been putting their stuff into their pockets. Women, however, were still toting around bags under their petticoats. By the time Upper and Lower Canada were established, women’s silhouettes were becoming slimmer and it was no longer as easy to hide their pockets under their skirts and so they began carrying small, highly decorated reticules to carry their things.[iii] Another century on (men having had wonderful, useful pockets this whole time mind you) women began pushing for pockets and the Rational Dress Society was founded in 1891.[iv] This society basically declared to heck with it, women should wear clothes that are functional and make movement (like riding a bike) easy! Women then began sewing pockets into their dresses even when it would “ruin the silhouette”.
This rational dress movement and the push for pockets ran alongside and in conjunction with the suffragette movement that had begun in England. It was time for women to have the right to vote, work, and put their hands in their pockets, dang nabbit! And so, with immense effort and mobilization, women fought for their rights and eventually, made headway towards achieving them. By the 1920s, women had all the pockets they could want. Post-war fashion was all about function over form and women lived for their breathable, knee-length, drop waist dresses which quite often included pockets. And so, if this is the case, and women, despite the struggle, had achieved pockets in their everyday wear by the 1920’s, why are we still finding fake pockets in a 1950s Canadian Army uniform?
I took that question to the internet and found an article entitled “A Woman’s Right to Charm and Beauty: Maintaining the Feminine Ideal in the Canadian Women’s Amy Corps” by Tina Davidson. In this I felt my suspicions begin to be confirmed. During the Second World War, there was much public anxiety about women entering into the military. “Your place is at home, supporting the war effort!” many cried. And, when they weren’t heard, they switched to damaging the reputations of women who did sign up for the army. Where men were praised for their bravery and commitment to freedom and the cause, women were considered immoral and “loose” by the public for joining up. Within the army, the femininity of women was policed as well. The CWAC uniform was of course immensely important in maintaining and emphasizing the femininity of female recruits. In the article Davidson notes that, “the uniform was designed along tailored lines that emphasized the feminine figure.”[v] The public was never to forget that these recruits were women and, despite the negative view of them, conservative women, as the hems of the skirts were to be “unfashionably long.”[vi] This skirt length, “demonstrated that the Army was more concerned with maintaining a morally respectable appearance than with […] military serviceability.”[vii] And so, women in the military were forced to wear, narrow, long skirts, that impeded their ability to perform their essential war tasks. (“Change a tire in the mud of Normandy in a skirt, they said, it will be good for your feminine figure, they said,” – poppycock!). I should note too that there was no option for trousers, nothing so functional (masculine) as that, God forbid.
I then reached out to the Canadian War Museum as my suspicions about what had happened were mounting. I received an email back quite promptly from Arlene Doucette, Collections Specialist of Dress and Insignia, and, while it neither confirmed nor denied by suppositions, I am incredibly thankful for her opinion on the matter and her very prompt response. In her reply, she said that unfortunately, they did not have the resources to explain why the decision to use false pockets on post-war CWAC uniforms was made. She did say that wartime CWAC uniforms did have functioning pockets, however, and went on to note that, “we have several uniforms in our collection that also have false pockets from this post-war period. I could theorize that such pockets give a cleaner line to the uniform […] and that it would be more economical to use false pockets than functional ones, but those are just theories.” Thank you, Arlene, it’s not an exact explanation, but I think it does support my hypothesis.
And with this response, I come to my conclusion. Despite all of my digging I was not able to find a definite source to say that there were no pockets in post-war CWAC uniforms because women were not respected as strong, capable members of the military. But, I do feel that the surrounding evidence regarding the war-time CWAC uniforms preoccupation with “femininity” and “figure”, the history (and present circumstance!) of functional pockets being primarily found on “masculine” clothing, and a general idea of the state of women and everyday life in the 1950’s, supports this theory. Why else would pockets have been left off of women’s post-war uniforms but not men’s? Arlene mentions a “cleaner line”, and so we return to the idea of preserving the feminine form. She also mentions that no pockets were “more economical” and so we have the idea that the army did not feel it necessary to spend “extra” funds on women’s uniforms to provide them with pockets. Was it considered “extra” funds to put pockets in men’s uniforms? After the War, we know that women were encouraged to return to the home – there were many in society who wished for things to return to pre-war normalcy. Of course, this didn’t happen, but the lack of functional pockets speaks volumes about how the Canadian Army viewed women in the service at that time. Essentially, with no beating around the bush, the uniforms say, “what on earth would a post-war CWAC woman have to put in her pockets?” and so deeply imply that post-war CWAC women were unimportant in the eyes of the Canadian Army, or, at least less important that post-war men.
This was a frustrating post to write. While I suspected sexism was the cause from the beginning, it was incredibly difficult to find a source that said “overt sexism in the Canadian Army resulted in a lack of functional pockets in post-war women’s uniforms” even though, I think evidence strongly suggests this. But it was also a very interesting dive into history to take and, like the last little post I made, it came from a seemingly small and insignificant detail on a piece of clothing. It is easy to think sometimes that provenance is just the big picture, just the war, or just women in the war, or just the 1950’s. But provenance is and can be deeper than that and the more specifically we can pin it down, the better understanding of history we have. Even with all of this, I still don’t know who actually wore that uniform. I don’t know what she did, or who she was, or what impact she had during or after the war because another thing I have noticed with women’s army uniforms is that they rarely have tailor’s tags in them. They rarely have names sewn into them, in my experience at least. And so, unfortunately, the woman who stood up for her country amid allegations of loose morals and shouts to stay home with her family and knit socks is lost, and all we have left is the story about how she wasn’t allowed to have pockets.
End notes
Sources
Davidson, Tina. "A Woman's Right to Charm and Beauty: Maintaining the Feminine Ideal in the Canadian Women's Army Corps." Atlantis, Vol. 26.1. 2001, pp. 45-54.
Summers, Chelsea G. "The Politics of Pockets." Vox, Sept. 2016. https://www.vox.com/2016/9/19/12865560/politics-of-pockets-suffragettes-women
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