WWII WAC Uniform

This entry is part 7 of 23 in the series Carondelet Historical Society Project

Back in 2011, I got to borrow this World War II Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC and later WAC) uniform with matching garrison cap from a local historical society.

This was my first shoot for the Carondelet Historical Society, and the first picture from this first shoot is my favorite. Anita had never modeled before, and was introduced to me via an online guy friend in Arkansas. How awesome is that?

Some of these pictures I edited with a Kodachrome effect. Others are as they came out of my camera and totally untouched. I could retouch her skin and remove blemishes, but I believe these add to the artistic quality of this series.

A little bit of history about this version of the WAC uniform that I found online:

Due to harsh criticism of unsatisfactory fitting and material of the first WAAC uniforms many revisions had to be made.
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A new jacket was developed, with a better-fitting prolonged upper collar. The bulky breast pockets that caused unwanted fullness of the bust were replaced by simulated pockets with buttoned flaps.
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Because of the prolonged collar other parts of the jacket automatically were set lower: the breast pockets, the button closure and the slit pockets. The whole jacket was a little bit longer now as well. Unfortunately, the bottom button was set too low so that one had to unbutton the jacket for comfortable sitting.
Another problem was that the new jackets were tailored by men’s garment contractors and therefore became too stiff and appeared awkward.
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The skirt pattern was also revised. The previous straightcut of the gores caused wrinkling and rolling of the skirt. Therefore the new skrirt was rounded at the hips to fit better to the actual female figure.

This WAC uniform was almost in new condition and still had ironing seams! The army dress shirt may or may not have gone with it, because it was disproportionately huge.

Below are some of my original edits. It’s interesting to see what I thought was awesome back in 2011 and what I think is awesome now, and my changes in editing vision: