Dressed for War

Uniform, Civilian Clothing and Trappings, 1914 to 1918

Men in khaki and grey squatting in the trenches, women at work, gender bending in goggles, with overalls on over their trousers. What people wear matters. Well illustrated, this book tells the stories of what people on both sides wore on the front line and on the home front through the seismic years of World War I. Nina Edwards reveals fresh aspects of the war through the prism of the smallest details of personal dress, of clothes, hair and accessories, both in uniform and civilian wear. She explores how, during a period of extraordinary upheaval and rapid change, wearing a certain perfume, say, or the just-so adjustment to the tilt of a hat offer insights into the individual experience of men, women and children during the course of World War I.