Consumer practices of the second world war as an experience for modern practices of conscious consumption and "slow fashion"

The article is devoted to the study of fashion and consumer practices during the Second World War. The subject of the study is the practice of using clothing in extreme wartime conditions. The purpose of the study is to identify the features of fashion in the historical context. The task is to consider how the normalized distribution affected the attitude of people to clothing. The authors researched the wartime fashion on the example of the USSR, Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and France. The research hypothesis is that fashion can be interpreted as the result of widespread consumer practices caused by extreme living conditions, based on the experience of previous periods and abandoned after the war. The idea of «slowing down» fashion first appeared during the Second World War, so as not to waste the resources necessary for military purposes on the production of clothing for the civilian population. The main characteristics of military fashion generated by rationing measures were common to all countries. The minimum amount of clothing that could be purchased using coupons (cards, coupons, stamps) forced people to sew clothes themselves, alter old things, and use unusual materials for making clothes, shoes, accessories, and jewelry. In all countries, they evaluated economical consumption as «consumer patriotism», «patriotic chic». The experience of various interactions of people with clothing in wartime conditions can be used in modern practices in the context of current trends of «slow fashion» and «conscious consumption», customization and prolongation of the life of things. The article offers examples of the application of this experience by both manufacturers (designers) and modern consumers. In this perspective, they have not considered the fashion of wartime yet, as well as they have not drawn parallels between the military fashion in the USSR and the countries of the West. Further studies of wartime consumer practices from the point of view of the concepts of «slowing down consumption» seem very promising.