Uniform Matters: Fashion Design in World War II Women's Recruitment

Abstract

They were showing the audience that we had gotten together. They were showing how the women in the Navy were still women. And ladies. The whole thing was to let society know that our girls were their girls... They were daughters and sisters.Dorothy Turnbull (Stewart), World War II WAVE Recruiter1Tailor-made. Ladylike. Gorgeous. These terms echo through the oral histories of women who served in the Navy and Coast Guard during World War II. The women are talking about the uniform they wore while in the service. It was couture-designed, in contrast to uniforms for the other women's service branches.Fashion theorists note that uniforms are classic examples of authority in clothing, with connotations of power conferred upon the wearer (Vining and Hacker; Fussell). Couture style, far from frivolous, gives women substance, allowing them to construct a uniform identity while at the same time expressing their difference from other women. Even before the first training class for women began during World War II, military brass in the Navy and Coast Guard were discussing the uniform the women would eventually wear. There were high expectations. The uniform would, after all, become the public face of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and SPARs (from the Coast Guard motto Semper Paratus, Always Ready), communicating both the image and the identity of the female volunteers. It would also become the focal point of the Navy's public relations campaigns, seen in posters, photographs, and film. To understand the meaning of military service for the more than 100,000 women enlistees in the two service branches, it is necessary to understand the powerful image presented by the uniform, and what that uniform meant to volunteers.The Navy and Coast Guard2 could not draft women during wartime; they were forced to rely on the willingness of women to volunteer for the service branches, which were separate units within each branch of the military. By looking at how the military used the uniform as part of a larger identity campaign to entice women, one can also explore how-or if-the recruits embraced that same identity during their military careers. Through oral history interviews and textual analysis of the uniform itself, I explore how Navy and Coast Guard recruits remember the uniform and use it within their storytelling to reinforce their wartime identities. Fifty-two women from across the United States were interviewed for this project; the interviews were supplemented with archival oral history interviews of officers with the WAVES and SPARs. Multiple uniforms were also examined, held in both archival (Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, the University of Northern Iowa Archives and Special Collections, the Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project at the University of North Carolina Greensboro Archives) as well as in personal collections. Finally, publicity and recruitment brochures created by the Navy were also analyzed.I argue that the designer uniform allowed the volunteers to position themselves as a more elite force than those in other service branches such as the Army, which outfitted their recruits in off-the-rack styles. It was more sophisticated and ladylike than other uniforms, and so served as a tool to subtly reinforce those traditional qualities for female recruits. At the same time, the uniform allowed the women to subtly rebel against the constraints of their time. The women, most from working-class or farming families, used the upheaval of war to upend their own lives, and saw this never-before opportunity to serve in the regular Navy3 as a pathway to a college education and a solid middle class existence (Ryan). The designer uniform played a pivotal role in this transformation.The Couture ConnectionPaul Fussell notes that uniforms appear across all spectrums of life. Nurses, chefs, law enforcement officers, clergy, professional athletes, and other groups of people all don traditional uniforms when heading to a place of employment, but uniforms are often present in other places as well. …