Land Girls: Cinderellas of the Soil

A material culture, uniform-based, analysis of the Women’s Land Army in Britain with extensive contextual evidence drawn from oral testimony and archival evidence.

Innovative museological interpretation which explored exhibiting mass-produced multiples (museums usually privilege singularity); uniform and uniformity; the more recent biography of the breeches and how the meanings and use values of these objects have changed over time and space.

A film, ‘Their Past, Your Future’, involved school girls interviewing land girls and then each discussing the experience. The project fed into contemporary preoccupations with nostalgia, the new austerity, local food production and the environment.

The accompanying publication provided a new reading of (Women’s Land Army) uniform. It comprises a broad socio-cultural contextual analysis, followed by a biography of breeches from American cotton plantations to UK textiles mills, clothing manufacturers, distribution networks, wear by land girls and finally, as rag, when returned to the land as fertiliser.

Unworn uniform was sent abroad as post-war relief: today it is re-presented and re-circulated as militaria (for living history) or vintage fashion. Uniform and uniformity (how garments were customised) are also scrutinised.

Agricultural statistics were compiled by Dr Nicola Verdon, University of Sussex. Photographs (90% new/not previously published) were sourced from private, regional and national museum collections.

Amy de la Haye

Research Interests

Fashion in the context of the museum
Fashion and dress history 1850 onwards
Material culture/object-based analysis
Women's Land Army

• http://hwj.oxfordjournals.org/content/70...