‘Clothes Shall Mark the Man’: Wearing Suits in Wartime Australia, 1939–1945

Abstract

This article aims to extend the ways in which the experiences of Australia’s Second World War civilians and returned servicemen are understood, through a close reading of four men’s suits. These suits reveal a dynamic wartime sartorial transformation that was shaped by cloth and workforce shortages, government intervention and social pressure, patriotic consumption, masculine duty and dignity. The suits shine a light on the cultural meanings of home front masculinities when men were marked by their clothes, drawing a line between men’s attentiveness to their dress and their concerns, anxieties and desires.