"Style Show Salutes Navy"

Although the article below indicates the last fashion styles for spring 1941, they can easily work for a summer wardrobe as well. Who doesn't enjoy vintage nautical fashions? I've included LOTS of pictures in this post! Enjoy!!

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From the Dallas Morning News, January 9, 1941.

First Spring Style Show Salutes Navy. Anchors Aweigh Played as Models Parade at Lunch. By Alma Cunningham.

The United States Navy got a salute Wednesday noon in the first Neiman-Mercus spring style show at the Baker Hotel Mural Room, and well they might for all that fashion has borrowed from the sailor's uniform. To the tune of Anchors Aweigh, pretty models tripped across the platform where two of Uncle Sam's sailors stood with a rigidity that would have shamed a cigar store Indian, only to follow a cutie wearing one of the new middy-blouse dresses.

Etsy

The middy, the veritable uniform for girls a decade or more ago, pops up again this season in various adaptations for women with an egle eye on high fashion. Two styles were featured in the show, one a white crepe dress, short sleeved, with an all-around knife-pleated skirt and a navy blue sailor's collar, the other a navy blue sheer woolen with long sleeves, wide pleats at the front and back of the skirt, and a red neckerchief.

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Life Magazine, 1940

Miami Beach Fashion 1940 Life magazine

 Life Magazine, 1940

Hollywood starlets, Barbara Bates, Karen Randle, Poni Adams, Kerry Vaughn and Jean Trent c. 1945

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Slender Line Retained.

The slender line of skirts, even in all-around pleated ones, has been carefully retained.Those of the wide pleats have been designated with straight panels at the sides to give an illusion of slenderness, a neat bit of strategy from the fashion front.

A mess-jacketed suit in a navy blue woolen with spaced red pin stripes, braided lapels, eagles on hats, gold buttons on jackets, Fleur-de-lis and the chevron on sleeves, little caps worn gob-fashion on the back of the head - these are fashion's newest pets.

Solid rows of silver one-inch buttons are used by Louise Barnes Gallagher on one of her navy blue mesh suits. The suit shown had a straight skirt, topped by a jacket with sloping shoulders. Rows of buttons marched down the front of the jacket, across the top of the two pockets, and sailed around the outside of the sleeves just below the shoulder line.

Navy ensembles for the the most part were shown with navy accessories, and relied on the sparkling golf emblems or the buttons for the accent. However, there was a sprinkling of navy with yellow, with bright Kelly green, with brilliant red, and again with the palest of beige.

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1940s nautical fashions from Life magazine

"Yeomanette" shoes Sears, 1941

Kedettes Womens Shoes (1941)

Simple Navy Dress.

A simple navy dress, for instance, was worn under a casual beige coat, and the model's shoes were red. A double-breasted navy blue dress with a cowhide belt was worn with a white camel's-hair coat, the sleeve of which sported a sparkling gold Fleur-de-lis.

Another ensemble combined a pink and white printed crepe dress topped by a navy blue coat lined with the dress crepe and the model wore a pale blue felt hat stabbed with a tiny red feather a the front of the upturned brim. A jaunty Kelly green jacket was worn with a straight navy skirt and white blouse. The green was repeated in the band around a navy hat.

Cite for evening wear, come daffodil time, were short red wool capes over white dinner dresses, navy blue capes with red linings and gold emblems, worn over white wool dinner dresses with gold epaulets.

 

Life Magazine, 1940