I have had this sewing pattern for more than 5 years, and I actually first bought it to use for my graduation outfit. I had been inspired by the costumes worn by actress Evelyn Brochu in the Canadian TV show X Company. X Company is probably my all time favourite show, and although it only ran for 3 seasons, I still rewatch it constantly. It follows a team of Canadian spies during World War Two, following them from the Ontario spy camp Camp X (which really existed and inspired some of the gadgets in James Bond!) to France to Germany. This show is incredibly well done, with believable and complicated characters, and it highlights the grey morality of people living in Nazi occupied Europe. I also love the costumes in the show. They were designed by Andrea Flesch and she used a mixture of genuine vintage and new designs. Each of the characters garments look well used and realistic, but that does not stop them from being beautiful. Each character wears the clothing that would make sense with their surroundings - a high ranking Nazi officers wife wears elegant, expensive clothing, while the French townspeople wear flat caps, worn dresses, and darned trousers.
The team is made up of five people, one of which is a woman. Aurora was my favourite to watch due to her fabulous wardrobe, and the looks that I loved the most came from when she was undercover. I specifically loved 2 different suits that she wore in the second and third seasons. These suits are made up of high necked dresses with A-line skirts and a crew neck blazer in a matching wool. I was desperate to find a good quality, light coloured wool to make this pattern with for my high school graduation. This pattern (V9052) is from 1947, a few years after the events of the show, but I think that it almost exactly matches the suits that Aurora wears in the show. Unfortunately, I was never able to find the wool that I was looking for so I ended up wearing a store bought grad dress instead.
I did make the dress later, and I have made it a few times now. But I never had made the blazer to go with it, and after finding the most beautiful dark blue 100% wool from a local fabric store, I decided to splurge on the fabric in order to make the suit of my dreams.
The dress has a high neckline with a slit detail and short sleeves. It is incredibly comfortable, and it has the added benefit of making me feel like an undercover spy when I wear it (especially if I wear it with a beret!). The jacket is shaped with darts and has a lovely notched collar. I found these fantastic buttons from Michaels. Since the fabric was such high quality, I wanted to take my time to do everything properly. The dress seams were finished with matching cotton bias tape, with a blue lace tape at the hem, and the blazer is fully lined.
My favourite thing about the shows costumes is that many of them are genuine vintage, and it adds a lived-in feel to the whole show. Although costuming totally depends on budget, time, director, and a variety of other factors (including actors and weather), it does bother me sometimes when I watch a show set during WW2 and everyone is wearing beautiful new clothes (ahem, Hollywood).
Fabric, along with food, metal, and nearly everything else, was heavily rationed during the Second World War. Natural fibers were very difficult to come by unless they were from previously worn garments. Women had to be crafty to keep up with trends. Many would remake an old dress to give it a more modern silhouette (such as adding shoulder pads to a dress or jacket and shortening skirts to knee length), and if a dress was wearing through, many would splice it with another to create a colour blocked garment. This way they could keep whatever parts of the dress that were still in good condition. This means that nearly everything had been worn and mended before. Doubly so for people who did manual labor, such as working on farms or in factories.
When we are looking at Nazi occupied territory, there was another way to get new clothes. Jewish homes were raided after they were sent to ghettos and camps, and those clothes, jewels, and other items could be bought by German people. Any of the nicer things (such as fur coats, evening dresses, etc) were often brought home by higher ranking Nazi officers to their wives and families.
This is why I find the history of fashion so important - vintage clothes tell important stories, and if we pay close enough attention, we can sometimes track a garments path.
Since X Company is set in Nazi occupied territory, they often show the dark side of fashion in subtle ways. For example, Aurora wears many suits that were left behind by a wealthy Jewish family, and she has to take the stars off of the sleeves before she can wear them. In later seasons they explore this in more depth. The costumes also help them show the intricate power balances that took place during the war. Collaborators may have had nicer clothing than those who kept their heads down, but not nearly as nice as the Nazi's and their families who had the best of everything.
They also use the costumes to track the characters. Aurora's outfits change drastically depending on what she is doing. She wears some of the fanciest evening dresses while undercover, and wears trousers and mens shirts while hiding in the woods and training Resistance. The clothes that they wear in each scene are painstakingly chosen to make them either blend in or stand out, and it is easy to tell when they are undercover and pretending to be someone else. The actors have said that the costumes were an essential part of each character, and helped them understand the story better.
Anyway, thank you for listening to my ramble on costuming World War Two! I find that the best part of having a blog is that I can write about whatever I am interested in at the moment, so you happen to be privy to all of my obsessions. This is one that I have been interested in for years and years, so it is always exciting to have the chance to talk about it, even if it is just to myself and the few people who read my blog:)
Thanks,
~Katherine
