Those Forties Prints

Found photo Sometimes I think that people can be easily divided into simple categories, like those who like the morning and those who prefer the night. Fashion offers many such stark divisions, such as the rift between those who favor flowing styles and those who like crisp tailored looks. And lets not forget the gap between flowered and geometric textiles. According to Jane Dormer’s wonderfully informative book, Fashion in the Forties and Fifties, on many levels fashion went through a big shake up at the end of World War Two. Not only did the boxy, tailored suits and crisp shirtdresses of the forties fade into the more flowing and curvy confections of the fifties, but textile patterns moved from geometrics to florals. “Ín the forties small abstract patterns composed typically of dots and dashes were popular,” she writes. “In the fifties stylized flowers were among the most favoured designs.” This mother daughter photo has no date, but it is easy to place it squarely in the forties.…