Wearing Propaganda : Textiles on the Home Front in Japan, Britain, and the United States

by Jacqueline Atkins

• ISBN13: 9780300109252
• ISBN10: 0300109253
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2005-12-15
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Protest fashion from the Vietnam War years is widely familiar, but today few are aware that dramatic fashion and textile designs served as patriotic propaganda for the Japanese, British, and Americans during the Asia-Pacific War (19311945). This fabulously illustrated book presents hundreds of examples of how fashion was employed by those on all sides of the conflict to boost morale and fan patriotism. From a kimono lined with images of U.S. planes blowing up to a British scarf emblazoned with hopeful anti-rationing slogans,Wearing Propagandadocuments the development of the role of fashion as propaganda first in Japan and soon thereafter in Britain and the United States. The book discusses traditional and contemporary Japanese styles and what they revealed about Japanese domestic attitudes to war, and it shows how these attitudes echoed or contrasted with British and American fashions that were virulently anti-Japanese in some instances, humorously upbeat about wartime deprivations in others. With insights into style and design, fashion history, material culture, and the social history of Japan, the United States, and Britain, this book offers unexpected riches for every reader.

Author Biography

JACQUELINE ATKINS is adjunct professor at New York University and curator of the Bard Graduate Center Wearing Propaganda exhibition.

Table of Contents

Director's preface	p. 9
Foreword	p. 11
Introduction	p. 19
The Asia-Pacific war and its precedents 1895-45	p. 32
Setting the context	p. 39
Propaganda on the home fronts : clothing and textiles as message	p. 51
Propaganda precedents : pre-1930 propaganda textiles	p. 75
Japan's beautiful modern war	p. 93
Potatoes are protective, too : cultural icons of Britain at war	p. 115
An American vision : propaganda on the home front during World War II	p. 137
"Extravagance is the enemy" fashion and textiles in wartime Japan	p. 157
Design and war : Kimono as "parlor-performance" propaganda	p. 171
War-promoting Kimono (1931-45)	p. 183
Keeping up home front morale : "beauty and duty" in wartime Britain	p. 205
London squares : the scarves of wartime Britain	p. 229
Showing the colors : America	p. 239
An Arsenal of design : themes, motis, and metaphors in propaganda textiles	p. 258
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