Clothes and School Uniform

Victorian and Edwardian children's clothing was liberating by contrast with what had gone before. Combinations and liberty bodices, sandals, jerseys, smocks, Norfolk jackets and blouses were clearly more comfortable than many older garments and helped to lessen weight, tightness and constriction of clothing - but the children who experienced them first didn't always see it that way. For one thing the garments were often still made of heavy fabrics and worn in numerous layers: as Vera Brittain (born 1893) remarked '…all girls' clothing of the period appeared to be designed by their elders on the assumption that decency consisted in leaving exposed to the sun and air no part of the human body that could possibly be covered with flannel…' (Testament of Youth, (London: Gollanccz,1933).

We have the witness of a good many writers who were children of the Edwardian era on this subject, and they make heartfelt comments about uncomfortable clothing, with the ring of personal experience.  CS Lewis (born 1898) '…In Narnia your good clothes were never your uncomfortable ones. They knew how to make things that felt beautiful as well as looking beautiful in Narnia: and there was no such thing as starch or flannel or elastic to be found from one end of the country to the other…' (C S Lewis The Last Battle , London: The Bodley Head, 1956).

Noel Streatfield (born 1897) felt that the peculiar clothes she was made to wear as a child blighted her young life. Marguerite Steen's graphic descriptions of the discomforts of her clothing in the 1900s include a minimum of forty buttons on her underwear alone, a liberty bodice like a coat of mail, and starched lace on her chemise that prickled like a ring of thistles around her neck. It could certainly be '…a good hour's hard work' to get dressed. (The Years of Grace ed. Noel Streatfeild 1950, London: Evans Brothers, 1950).

Rudyard Kipling's Dan and Una in Rewards and Fairies (London: Macmillan, 1910) were dismal about having to wear boots.  '"They've put us into boots," said Una. "Look at my feet-they're all pale white, and my toes are squidged together awfully." "Yes-boots make a difference." Puck wriggled his brown, square, hairy foot, and cropped a dandelion flower between the big toe and the next. "I could do that-last year," Dan said dismally, as he tried and failed. "And boots simply ruin one's climbing." "There must be some advantage to them, I suppose," said Puck, "or folk wouldn't wear them…"'

From the beginning of the 20th century more and more schools adopted complete uniforms in their own colours, often with a motto and song, to give a sense of school identity. Competition between schools at sport had popularised the wearing of identifying colours and garments by the teams, and in fact many of the uniform garments were derived from sportswear, including gymslips, caps and blazers.

Elizabeth Goudge and Vera Brittain seem to have particularly hated their school uniforms: 'The school hat was a hard sailor, tipped forward over the nose and secured with elastic. The elastic used to stretch and we tied knots in it, and somehow the knots always looked black and dirty.' Elizabeth Goudge The Joy of the Snow (London: Hodder& Stoughton, 1974)

'We wore green flannel blouses in winter and white flannel blouses in the summer, with long navy blue skirts, linked to the blouses by elastic belts which continually slipped up or down, leaving exposed an unsightly hiatus of blouse-tape or safety-pinned shirt-band'. (Testament of Youth)