I'm standing in the tunnels at English Heritage's Dover Castle where the

military was stationed during the nation's fight for victory in the Second World War

Among those were ladies from the Women's Royal Naval Service

otherwise known as the Wrens. In addition to their

formidable contribution to the war effort, women across the country had

another weapon in their arsenal - makeup. Cosmetics became crucial for morale and

were encouraged by everyone from Vogue magazine to the British government. Today

we're taking a look at the surprising role cosmetics played during the Second

World War when Britain put on a brave face. Are you ready? Let's find out more

Hello Rebecca!

Hey Amber, how's it going?

Good, how are you?

I'm alright thank you, welcome to Dover!

Thanks very much

Well today we're focusing on the Second World War which began in 1939 and lasted

for six long years. We're also focusing on the Wrens, so Rebecca tell me about

the look that you're going to recreate for us today

We're going to be creating something that feels very classic 1940s so

beautiful powdered skin and a bright red lip on our gorgeous model, Ella

Hi Ella

Hello

We're also going to be incorporating some homespun hacks from our brilliant

audience. I'm excited to try these out

I'm very excited to see them. Now makeup

is often dismissed as frivolous but during the war it took on extra

importance in terms of morale. Vogue even talked about it as 'cherished a last

desperately defended luxury' so it's going to be great to explore makeup and

especially the women who wore it and their huge contribution to the war effort

Let's get started

What are you doing first?

Well let's start the beginning

and let's start with skincare. Now we had an account from a Wren who

was based here in Dover called Doreen, and her account says that skincare

became really hard to get hold of during the war it was like gold dust but she

had a chemist friend that could make her a vanishing cream that she could use

throughout the war and so I found a vanishing cream that's made to an

authentic late 1930s, 1940s recipe that I'm going to use on Ella here. And what a

vanishing cream does is it vanishes into the skin and it also provides a

brilliant base of powder

So it's kind of like a primer?

It's very much like a primer, yes. Interestingly with makeup from the

beginning of the early 20th century it started out being something that's quite

unseemly and something that's under the counter

But as we move onwards into the 1930s and into the 1940s makeup now is not

only an accepted part of your routine it's also almost an essential part of

your routine and in fact during the war beauty became a woman's duty

Well this is an idea that the government really promoted as well. The Board of Trade

proclaimed in 1940 'keep up the morale of the homefront by preserving

a neat appearance' and this was a line that fashion magazines really echoed as well

In fact, for example, they even advised women against turning into frights and slovens

That's a real shame that it seems to be just a woman's

duty not to turn into a fright or a sloven. We're in a time where women are starting to

take on newer jobs and also have to keep the home fires burning and then also

they have to look awesome while they're doing it

A woman's work is never done

It is a lot to expect

So let's finish off this skincare and I'm going to apply a powder now this is an

original 1940s powder

That is beautiful

It's fabulous! I'm applying it with a

powder puff this is a homemade powder puff which feels very in keeping with

the time. And you'll notice that this is in a cardboard box. Now during the war as

austerity started to kick in, manufacturers of cosmetics couldn't use

metal anymore all the metal had to go to the war effort so more and more

cosmetics were produced in cardboard containers just like these

Long, luscious lashes are a really integral part of the late 1930s into the 1940s look

But as austerity started to bite, women had to look for alternatives to darken

and lengthen their eyelashes. We had some amazing tips and tricks from our

audience to do with mascara but the one that intrigued me most was using burnt

corks as a mascara. The suggestion was to burn a cork and then use the ash

mixed with some Vaseline as a mascara. So we're going to give that a try

Hold onto that for me, Ella. Thank you

Well speaking of austerity these ideas of rationing and austerity

really define this era in terms of personal appearance. Clothes rationing

lasted from 1941 to 1949 and was really all about fairness, it was about making sure

that everybody had access to the essentials and it was also about

conserving materials for the war effort as well. So when we think of rationing we

can sort of broadly think about three different areas. Firstly there were

coupons which were issued and this was to make sure there was a sort of equal

distribution of clothing. So you'd need money as well as coupons to buy specific

items. For example, 11 coupons for a dress or 8 coupons for a men's shirt or pair of trousers

There was also the utility scheme that was brought in by the

government and this was a range of sort of well designed, price-controlled

clothing that really made factories much more efficient and so freed up

production again for the war effort. Now finally we have austerity

regulations. These were again brought in by the government and determined what

you could and couldn't design basically. So for example, the turn-up on men's

trousers was abolished, lapels you know the width of lapels was defined. There

were a whole host of rules brought in which help to conserve materials and

labour so they could be put towards the war effort. Now with all of this

rationing of fabric and food as well going on, women also have to be very

creative when it came to their makeup, didn't they?

Yeah they really did

Although makeup itself wasn't actually rationed, it did become much more

expensive and harder to get hold of and a couple of reasons for that is that the

government put a luxury tax on makeup and also it limited cosmetics companies

to just 25% of their pre-war output so it was much harder to get hold of which

meant some makeup had to do double duty and I'm going make this burnt cork do double duty

by applying it through the eyebrows as well

This is looking really good, it looks great, it works well

I know, I'm really surprised at how well this actually works and also the burnt cork through

the eyebrows is surprisingly effective and a really nice colour. We had a really

great quote from one of our audience members telling us that women of the era

would match the angle of their eyebrows to the angle of the stripes on their

uniform. I don't know whether that's true or not but I really like the idea of it

so we're going to do a really nice angle into Ella's eyebrows

So another way that women could cut costs during the war was to use

household products and produce to create makeup. And we had several people tell us

that beetroot was a product that people used because of its staining properties

and the colour of it so I thought we'd try out some beetroot as a little bit of rouge

Fantastic. Well saving money, saving materials - wow! - was of course important

'Make do and Mend' was the philosophy as promoted by the government

I love the look of that! It's so effective immediately

And so people were really encouraged to repair, to restore and to reuse

their clothing to really make it last as long as possible

And along with this, you know we tend to think of the war as this really

drab era defined by austerity, but there was a lot of creativity in terms of the

material people turned to and the way that they were dressing. So for example

black out fabric wasn't rationed so it was often used for clothing, it could be

turned into dresses. Also second-hand shopping became really important in

terms of replenishing people's wardrobes as well. These are all things that we

should be living by today as well, using your clothes for as long as possible,

secondhand, really taking a sustainable approach

And beetroot as blusher because -

- because it's fantastic!

It works very well

When we think of the 1940s we think of a classic, bold red lip

Why was red such an important colour?

Red is a really symbolic color anyway. It shows strength

in dark times. Nella Last wrote about wearing red lipstick. Now she kept a

diary all the way through the Second World War

And she said that wearing a too bright lipstick on dim days helped the corners

of the mouth turn up when you couldn't smile

So it was a way of showing strength, it was a way of showing unity in these really dark times

And also a way of showing that you were well presented and well kept

Interestingly, it was also rumoured that Hitler hated makeup and specifically he hated red lipstick

So to wear red lipstick was a way of saying that you were anti-Hitler

Cosmetics companies also saw a way in to produce wartime products and they

started to produce lipsticks that had rousing military names such as

'Auxilary Red' or 'Homefront Ammunition'. Now I couldn't get hold of any of those

particular lipsticks because they don't produce them anymore so I've gone for a

really intense bright red which is as close as I think I can get to what

I think those colors would have looked like

Now we know that red lipstick is kind of a uniform for the face, but tell me a bit about

uniform and how that relates to the Second World War

Well uniform becomes hugely prevalent at

this time. During the war between a quarter and a third of the population

are entitled to wear some kind of uniform whether they are fighting in the

Forces, whether they're working at home in the Forces or even civilian workers as well, people like

dock workers, nurses, the land army - they're all wearing some

form of uniform. So it's no surprise that it starts to affect the way people are

dressing in day-to-day life as well. It's also considered really bad form to be

dressed in a very showy or expensive way and even by spring 1940 we start seeing

Vogue running adverts for clothing with a military touch

So it's really beginning to enter all areas of fashion

Now we couldn't do a tutorial based on World War Two without talking about painted stockings and the effort

that women would go to to look good in difficult times

Well stockings were rationed from 1941 so you had to use coupons to buy them

Nylon stockings were a relatively new invention from America but from 1942

nylon was also put towards the war effort so they became even harder to get

hold of. So where clothing was sparse, makeup really stepped up to the job

It did, and it didn't

Explain?

We had some amazing suggestions from our audience

about how women were painting their legs to look like they're wearing stockings,

from boiled walnut shells to coffee and tea bags and then also the famous gravy browning

on the legs. Now you'll notice that Ella is wearing tights and there's

her reason for that. We tried gravy browning. Gravy browning does not look

good as stockings

Ah, I see, I see

It's an interesting colour and it's a little bit sticky so we

tried it, it didn't work brilliantly. There was also something else that we

tried that didn't work brilliantly but I wanted to show it to you anyway

I had a very clever model-maker friend of mine make this

- wow!

I'm calling this, the seam machine!

- brilliant!

And we made this from a picture that we found in the Smithsonian

It's a bicycle clip, it's a compass, it's a screwdriver handle and

it's an eyebrow pencil

- What a contraption!

It's amazing isn't it? So you're meant to use

this to actually draw a stocking line up the back of your own leg

So the bicycle clip goes on your leg and you draw it upwards

And how effective is it?

I'd say slim-to-none. Not very good at all! And interestingly we think that

using gravy browning is actually a little bit of a myth. Maybe like a

newspaper good news story, something that's light-hearted but maybe not very

many women were actually doing it

So not something that was actually sort of

widespread, used across the nation. But there was leg makeup, right, that could be used?

There absolutely was, yes. So companies started to see that women were making

their own way of making stockings so many brands started to produce liquid

stockings and and they were readily available and also beauty bars started

to populate in department stores where you go and have your legs painted

professionally using proper products for three pence a leg, to make it look like

you were wearing stockings

Brilliant! Well Ella you look fantastic

I'm going to leave you to get on with the hair, and I'm going to go and find out more

about the Wrens here at Dover

What does your job entail at English Heritage?