Fashion in Ruins: Photography, Luxury and Dereliction in 1940s London

Abstract

Using Cecil Beaton’s photographs of bombed London as a starting point, this essay examines fashion’s representation in 1940s London, during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. It focuses on fashion’s paradoxical status during a time of austerity and loss. Beaton’s images highlight contrasts between luxury, escape and desire, and the effects of war on the urban landscape, and the city’s inhabitants. Photographed against the ruins of bomb-scarred London, couture takes on different connotations, and femininity, as expressed through dress, gesture and pose, is problematized. Tensions between space, place, body and dress during this period are rethought, and the existence of not just a “ruins gaze,” but also an “austerity gaze” is perceived in the ways fashion photography invokes art and history in its representations of the dressed body.