1940s Fashion: How to get the look

“So, for me the most iconic part of a 1940s look is actually the hair because I think even if you do the makeup and you buy a lovely outfit, if your hair’s not right and it’s modern looking then it sort of ruins it all, so this is really what brings it all together. Last night Casey put in hair rollers, and she set her hair using setting lotion and you sleep on them overnight, you get used to that then wrap it up in a head scarf and then the next day it’s ready to take out. 

[Music]

When you take the rollers out just be careful not to tug at them because they can get tangled in the hair so just take them out nice and slowly and gently. The reason you need to curl your hair for a 1940s hairdo is because a lot of the styles are based around the shape that the rollers and the curls make so once you’ve got those already done it’s just a matter of techniques of brushing and pinning. 

Ok, so what we’re going to do today I think we’ll pin the top up we’ll do some rolls at the top. So, the first thing I’m going to do is just partition from behind the ears, so we’ve got a front section here. And then this is also really important, and it makes things a lot easier, this is actually a back combing comb, so I’m just going to do that to get texture and she’s going to look a little bit crazy for a while. We’ll just smooth the front down like so and then really, I just kind of wrap it around my finger to create a roll and then play with the placement of it, like that. So, once you’re happy with where it’s going you can just pin it into place. Repeat on the other side and then you can play with the placement of the rolls. 

So, before I move onto the back, I’m just going to secure that front bit. Casey’s hair line is like mine she’s got lots of little fine baby hairs which I really like and I, I actually think that 1940s hairstyles look better when they’re not sort of slick, what you call pin-up hair, I just think that looks a bit too contrived and I think that women at home would have been, you know, doing their own hair they didn’t have hairdressers at home doing it for them so a little bit of frizz and a little bit of mess and I think that’s, it looks much more authentic. 

So, for the back as you can we’ve just brushed out the curls and what we’ll do now is we’ll roll the back of Casey’s hair up and this is a kind of style that became popular because this is how women were instructed to wear their hair in the services as well and it just meant that it was back off their face, it’s very neat, very pretty look and it’s quite easy to recreate. 

A way that women would recreate this look was by using something that they called a rat, and a rat was made using their own hair. Now these days you don’t have to do that because you can go on the high street, and you can buy one of these which starts life as a donut and many people use them to create a bun but a lot of them come like that and basically you just use that to create the roll at the back of the head. 

So, I’m just going to brush the underside because that’s actually the side that you’re going to see that’s going to wrap around. And once I’ve done that, I’m going to take the hair rat and wrap the ends around it and then we’re going to begin to roll upwards. So, once you get to the nape of the neck, start to pin it in place.

So, then we’re going to start spreading the hair around the rat and inning in place. You’ve just got to make sure that you can’t see the end of the rat. 

Ok, just finishing up and then we just turn Casey around and there we have the roll. So, there we have the finished hair do with the back roll using the rat or donut and then the iconic victory roll at the front and I think this is quite an achievable hairdo that you can do yourself at home. Nice and simple if you’re coming along to the Duxford Battle of Britain Air Show.” 

“Hello, we are from the Living History Group, Spirit of Britain and we are a group of people who are passionate about history and recreating both military and civilian looks from the 1940s. And today as we gear up for the Duxford Battle of Britain Air Show we are going to show you how you can recreate some of those iconic looks. As World War two developed and cosmetic supplies began to dwindle, women had to become much more creative with their makeup but that is why the 1940s look is quite easy to create because it’s a very simple, sort of, paired back look. So, today Lucy and Casey are here to help show you how you can recreate this yourselves. 

We’re just going to do a very basic matte foundation here on Casey. She’s quite pale already so we’ll just keep it very simple. During World War Two government controls affected every part of a women’s life; what they ate, the type of clothes they wore and even how much water they were allowed in their baths. And in the face of this chaos women were still expected to look their best and they how presented themselves was the one thing they still had control over. It became a rather rallying moment for women and a symbol of defiance in the face of chaos and ultimately Hitler. 

Ok, so Lucy is just putting some eyeshadow on Casey and during the war the sort of palette for eyeshadows was very neutral so you’re looking at very earthy tones browns and nude colours if anything at all really. I mean when you look at pictures of women during the war most of the time, they’re not even really wearing any make up, that’s probably because they didn’t have any and if they are wearing make up it really is that sort of red lip and then maybe a bit of eye shadow. 

So, we’re going for a very subtle look on the eyelash just a very small slick of mascara there. Of course, when you see pictures of Hollywood starlets and such from the time, they were most likely wearing false eyelashes but the mascara tube as we know it didn’t really exist then. They had a sort of brush wasn’t it with a sort of cake of mascara and it was a bit awkward so but we want to just keep that nice and subtle. 

We’re just going to add a little bit of pink to the cheeks or rouge as they would have called it and one thing that they could have done if they’d run out of rouge during the war is use beetroot and we know that women did do this, and they used it for their lips as well when they ran out of lipstick. 

So now moving onto the iconic red lips. So, even if you have hardly any other make up on you can put on red lipstick and people will instantly recognise it as a 1940s makeup look. The lipstick that we’ve chosen is a very matte finish and that is more like the lipstick that they would have had in the day but in order to put it on nice and evenly we’ve added a bit of lip balm to the brush just to make application a lot easier. One thing they also used to do was overline the lips, so go over the natural line of your lip just to make your lips appear fuller. So, I think the red lipstick has become so iconic of the 1940s makeup look really because if you had nothing left in your supplies of makeup all you needed was one little bit of red lipstick left at the bottom of the tube and they could put that on and they would feel glamorous and fully made up. Gorgeous. 

So, the last step is just to apply a matte powder all over just to take away the shine. And that’s it. Nice and simple. 

Just to recap, we did a very simple base, a neutral eye with very subtle mascara, blusher, the iconic red lip and just finishing off with the matte powder. Just a very simple glamourous look that anyone can do just like us, we’re not makeup artists but very simple.”