Jane Fonda

[Xavier_Onassis]

A colleague of mine was born in Germany and lived there until she married an American soldier in the 1950's. She said that when the Americans came, she was in the British zone, right near the border of the American zone. The Americans invited the German girls to a dance at the USO. She had to sneak past the British guards into the American zone to get there. When she got to the dance, nearly all the girls were wearing red dresses with black and white trim. There was no fabric available, and their nice dresses were damaged during the bombings, and many had no washing machines or soap. So they made their dresses ourt of Nazi flags, which were not only in great abundance, but declared illegal.

[Cynthia]

A colleague of mine was born in Germany and lived there until she married an American soldier in the 1950's. She said that when the Americans came, she was in the British zone, right near the border of the American zone. The Americans invited the German girls to a dance at the USO. She had to sneak past the British guards into the American zone to get there. When she got to the dance, nearly all the girls were wearing red dresses with black and white trim. There was no fabric available, and their nice dresses were damaged during the bombings, and many had no washing machines or soap. So they made their dresses ourt of Nazi flags, which were not only in great abundance, but declared illegal.

I've also heard that parachutes were used to make wedding dresses in WW2.

[Plane]

A lot of the work given to my mother was renovation. They would buy ? yard of material and say ?can you put a new collar and cuffs on a dress? to make it look different. Torn parachutes were used for underslips and wedding dresses as they were make of silk. Flour bags were bleached and made into tablecloths ? I remember one used for a wedding present, edged with a check material and flowers embroidered in each corner to match.


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. Also clothing was rationed, furniture was rationed, you couldn?t just buy furniture unless you paid a lot of money and had very expensive furniture. For my wedding dress my grandmother gave me clothing coupons so that I would be able to have a white wedding dress and I also bought a half a silk parachute ? I shared with another girl at work, we had half a parachute each ? my mother and father sat and undid all the stitching on it. They had a lot of very strong stitching on them because they were used to save an airman?s life and then we had these very large pointed diamond shaped pieces of pure silk in a creamy colour which I made into nightdresses and other under-clothes which saved me a lot of coupons for my wedding day.

Don:
Perhaps you ought to say that these were discarded parachutes, they weren?t taken away from airmen!

Vera:
Yes they weren?t ones that were in use. Perhaps they had improved them and these silk ones were then sold at quite a cheap price for people like me to use.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/24/a8964624.shtml

[Cynthia]

A lot of the work given to my mother was renovation. They would buy ? yard of material and say ?can you put a new collar and cuffs on a dress? to make it look different. Torn parachutes were used for underslips and wedding dresses as they were make of silk. Flour bags were bleached and made into tablecloths ? I remember one used for a wedding present, edged with a check material and flowers embroidered in each corner to match.


[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

. Also clothing was rationed, furniture was rationed, you couldn?t just buy furniture unless you paid a lot of money and had very expensive furniture. For my wedding dress my grandmother gave me clothing coupons so that I would be able to have a white wedding dress and I also bought a half a silk parachute ? I shared with another girl at work, we had half a parachute each ? my mother and father sat and undid all the stitching on it. They had a lot of very strong stitching on them because they were used to save an airman?s life and then we had these very large pointed diamond shaped pieces of pure silk in a creamy colour which I made into nightdresses and other under-clothes which saved me a lot of coupons for my wedding day.

Don:
Perhaps you ought to say that these were discarded parachutes, they weren?t taken away from airmen!

Vera:
Yes they weren?t ones that were in use. Perhaps they had improved them and these silk ones were then sold at quite a cheap price for people like me to use.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/24/a8964624.shtml

Nice story, Plane!