The Yakima Valley's War-Time Dress Code
Facing high prices and looming war, local women’s clubs demand a standardization of fashion to cut costs.
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Delegates to the annual convention of the Yakima Valley District Federation of Women’s clubs held in Mabton last week placed themselves on a war basis when they declared for standardization of women’s dress that the cost of changing styles might be eliminated. Resolutions adopted at the meeting cited the unusually high price of materials and the necessity of conserving food as primary reasons for their stance. Furthermore, the Federation called upon the government to establish national prohibition and urged the War Department to rid military camps of 'moral and physical contamination' caused by camp followers, asserting this in the name of the mothers of America.
“We face with fortitude the privation and dangers thereof; therefore, as our right we call upon those in authority to protect these sons from that moral and physical contamination which we fear more than bullets.”
In 1917, as the nation entered WWI, women’s organizations were pivotal in shaping the 'home front' culture. Their call for standardized, simple dress prefigures the more famous 'victory suits' of the 1940s, showing how civic groups utilized wartime patriotism to challenge the consumerism of the era.
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