How World War II Changed Women's Underwear

World War II changed women's underwear mainly through shortage, not invention. From January 1942 the American War Production Board allocated silk, nylon, rubber and steel to the military, and from June 1941 Britain put every garment on coupons. The factories that made bras and girdles sewed parachutes and mosquito netting, while the women who wore their products went into shipyards and aircraft plants, where underwear became a matter of company rules.

Silk and nylon go to the parachute lofts

The newest fiber went first. DuPont had put nylon stockings on national sale on May 15, 1940, and sold 64 million pairs that year. Silk was already scarce, because trade embargoes against Japan had cut off American imports. From February 11, 1942, nylon production went to the military for parachutes, tents, airplane cords and rope, and the stocking counter emptied. On the black market a pair of nylons fetched as much as $20.

Women went bare-legged or faked it. Cosmetic firms sold leg makeup such as Leg Stick from Helena Rubinstein, Leg Show from Dorothy Gray and Leg Silk from Revlon, and the seam was drawn up the back of the calf with an eyebrow pencil. Getting that line straight took a steady hand. American women could still buy rayon and cotton stockings. British women paid two clothing coupons for a pair, so the bottle mattered more there.

Rubber, steel and the WPB rule book

The War Production Board was created by executive order in January 1942. It allocated steel, aluminum and rubber and stopped nonessential civilian production, nylon stockings included. Both shortages reached the foundation drawer: rubber is the raw material of elastic thread, and steel had been the standard corset bone since the middle of the nineteenth century.

The board's clothing rules, issued as order L-85, aimed to cut civilian cloth use by 15 percent. Hoods, cuffs, pleats and frills went; hems got shorter and lapels narrower. The United States never issued clothing ration books. It rationed the garment, not the shopper.

The metal shortage pushed along a change already under way. Historians of the bra credit the war's metal shortages with hastening the end of the corset, and by 1945 most fashionable women in Europe and North America wore a bra instead.

Britain's 66 coupons

Britain went further. Clothes rationing began in June 1941 at 66 points a year per civilian, cut to 48 in 1942, 36 in 1943 and 24 by 1945. Every garment cost coupons as well as cash. An adult's skirt took seven.

Utility clothing, marked CC41, was made to government specifications at controlled prices, and in 1942 London couturiers including Hardy Amies and Norman Hartnell designed Utility collections to prove austerity could still look like fashion. The Board of Trade's Make Do and Mend campaign, launched the same year, taught darning, patching and remaking through booklets, evening classes and a character called Mrs Sew-and-Sew.

A government survey of 1941 counted the bras. British women owned 1.2 each on average: housewives 0.8, farm workers 1.9. At the start of the war the bra was still a working garment, owned singly and worn out.

Rules for the factory floor

War work turned underwear into policy. Lockheed told its women employees that bras must be worn, for reasons of "good taste, anatomical support, and morale." Willson Goggles, a Pennsylvania maker of industrial safety gear, is believed to have introduced a plastic SAF-T-BRA for women on the shop floor, and a 1943 photograph in the US National Archives shows a Los Angeles safety uniform displayed beside a plastic bra. Women who joined the American military were issued regulation underwear for the first time.

Maidenform's war contracts

Bra makers stayed alive by doing other work. Maidenform took military orders that included parachutes and 28,500 pigeon vests, harnesses that let a paratrooper carry a homing pigeon on his chest and release it with a message after landing. Other manufacturers survived by making tents and parachutes beside their bras, and undergarment plants sewed mosquito netting.

The declaration nobody can find

Earlier versions of this exhibit said Maidenform filed a formal "Declaration of Essentiality" and that Washington then classed bras with food and ammunition. The story is everywhere, usually with a stirring quote attached. Neither the declaration nor the quote turns up in the sources this museum checked. What the record supports is plainer: under Ida Rosenthal the company converted part of its production to war work, and that kept it supplied with materials.

What the war left in the drawer

Advertising of the 1940s sold bras and girdles as patriotic "protection," and military language spread into product names. The structured, pointed torpedo or bullet bra, built for maximum projection, became the shape of the late 1940s. The war also cut the American trade off from Paris, and it came out with a look of its own.

Peace did not end the shortages at once. DuPont announced in August 1945 that stockings would return, and the backlog produced the nylon riots, including an estimated 40,000 people queuing in Pittsburgh for 13,000 pairs. Britain's coupons lasted until March 15, 1949, and the Utility scheme until 1952, seven years after the fighting stopped.

Last updated October 27, 2026

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