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Description
In the first in-depth critical history of men's everyday dress in the First World War, Rachel Neal analyses how clothing shapes men's wartime identities, and how those wartime identities shape men's clothing, becoming a material embodiment of experience and emotion.
The First World War shone a spotlight on men's clothing as a unique and powerful symbol of masculine identity. Yet while history has paid great attention to military uniforms and womenswear, the influential role of men's civilian dress has long been overlooked.
Drawing on letters, personal writings, newspapers, and photographs alongside surviving garments, Neal moves beyond the standard narrative of collective identity to recover the individual behind the uniform. She shows how men used dress to negotiate the boundary between civilian and military life, how visual culture and the idealisation of soldiers challenged everyday masculine dress, and how the war accelerated lasting shifts in menswear – from the demob suit and the rise of knitwear, to the resonance of a father's wartime greatcoat.
Reused, repurposed, and accumulating multiple narratives, surviving wartime garments hold evidence that written sources cannot; through these, Neal recovers a tactile, intimate history of the wartime everyday and reveals the enduring afterlives of the men who wore them.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Men's Clothing and the First World War
Men's Clothing Post-war
Clothing and the Material Embodiment of Lived Experience
1. Sartorial Identities: Clothing and Stories of Wear Before the First World War
Stories of Wear
Dress and Belonging
Ritual and Respectability
2. In Civvies: Civilian Men and Everyday Dress
Why Aren't You in Khaki?
Sartorial Patriotism
Standard Suits
3. Wearing Khaki: Soldiers and the Experience of Army Uniform
Embodying the Soldier
Comforts for the Troops
Makers and Menders in the Trenches
4. From Khaki to Civvies: Demobilisation and the Return to Everyday Dress
Discharged Soldiers' Clothes
Civvie Suits
Those 'Demob' Suits
5. War's Effect on Men's Dress: Men's Clothing Post-War
From War to Peace
Men's Dress Reform
Threads of Change
Post-war Youth and Clothing Cultures
Raising the Standard
6. Material Legacies: The Post-war Lives of Wartime Dress
Demobilising the Greatcoat
A Material Veteran
Material Fragments
Material Absences
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | Jan 07 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 256 |
| ISBN | 9781350464032 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Visual Arts |
| Illustrations | 67 bw illus |
| Dimensions | 9 x 6 inches |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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