subject: 1940s Pilot Clothing [print this page] Up until the 1940s women dressed very lady like with their skirts, dresses and heels. They had beautiful curled hair, teamed up with lipstick and were always the perfect housewife. This all changed when the men went off to fight for England. The women were left picking up the pieces and fighting for survival.
Things especially changed when women started to train to become pilots. There are many photos available of women sporting the mens pilot over-alls when training to fly. At first there was an enormous concern and worry allowing women to learn to fly, so much so that when they agreed to let it happen the women were not allowed to opt for a more comfortable choice of clothing to fly in.
This eventually changed after a cold January in 1940 when the hierarchy had been persuaded that the women should not have to fly in skirts and silk stockings as part of their uniform. The reasoning for this was because sometimes the women got so cold on landing that they had to be lifted from the cockpit by the ground crew. They were under a huge amount of pressure; they were constantly watched under a magnifying glass because a lot of the men didnt think they could achieve the same job status as themselves.
Now that the women were allowed a proper uniform this consisted of shirts, ties, trousers and an over seas cap. The only exception was at graduation when they were expected to wear a skirt, a jacket with padded shoulders and a skirt. The men soon got used to the trouser look of the ladies; Pauline Gower daughter of MP Robert Gower was a British pilot who headed the female branch of the Air Transport Auxiliary.
She managed to access a high media profile and the cover of magazines looking like a pin-up star in her pilot uniform, this wasnt a deliberate attempt of course. Due to Pauline Gower revolutionizing the rights to women to fly this has not only changed the equality of the roles of men and women but, it has changed the fashion styles of the women too.
Men and women can now work as a pilot and sport the same uniform as each other to fight for the same country. Women are no longer looked on as masculine for wearing trousers but instead they are respected for what they achieved during World War Two and, since then no one has looked back on job roles or the fashion wear.
