Anne (UK): That’s fasinating about your mother working in the War Cabinet rooms. Is that now the Churchill War Carbinet museum in London?

(Sorry for getting off subject)

I remember some stories from my mother about war fashions featuring much shorter skirts than in the years previous to the war, as a way of conserving fabric. But that would mean that fabric was still available for civilian use.

Maybe another reader will chime in with a more complete answer.

I don’t know ZCMI’s process for vetting ad proposals, but I can see that this particular ad might have been borne simply out of an effort to come up with something to meet that ever pressing deadline. Perhaps the crush of getting something out the door is a mitigating factor to the ad’s crassness.

Excuse, yes. Endorse, no.

my Mother worked in the underground War Cabinet rooms for a week at a stretch, and used to speak of how wonderful fresh air felt on her face when finally she surfaced. On several nights a month, she and her sisters either firewatched from London rooftops, or helped out in soup kitchens for bombed out civilians and rescue workers. I somehow doubt new hats were top of her agenda!

Did you have clothes rationing in the US like we did here? Never wondered about that before.

The war news was unremittingly bleak for the Allies, in both Europe and the Pacific, until the Battle of Midway in early June, but the effects of the war were scarcely felt at all in the mainland U.S., unless you happened to have a brother or son or husband or father in the armed forces. Automobile production had in fact ceased–and factories were re-tooling for war production, but rationing didn’t begin until May 1942 (and it was introduced gradually, beginning with food and then expanding to include gasoline and rubber and nylon–no more stockings, ladies!). So, if the ad appeared early in the year, we might excuse the ad writer’s attitude.