Often thought of as one of the least flattering garments of the 40s, one piece of wartime clothing captured the hearts and imagination of the nation like no other. The siren suit – a roomy one piece jumpsuit designed to be pulled on quickly over night clothes should the air raid sirens sound.
The history of all in one overalls dates back as far as the 1750’s when the British Army used them as a protective layer over formal clothing. But it’s not until around WW1 that we start to see the word jumpsuit being used to described a slim fitting garment that covered the arms and legs, usually worn by parachutists jumping out of planes – hence the name.
Fashion quickly picked up on the jumpsuit beginning to see it for more than just it’s practical properties when the Italian artist Thayat produced his version, the TuTa, in the early 1920s. But it was Elsa Schiaparelli in the late 1930s who really elevated the jumpsuit to a high fashion garment. From here its status grew and the jumpsuit made its first appearance in Vogue in September 1964.
The siren suit was unique in the history of the one piece garment in that it provided a practical solution to a wartime problem. Vogue magazine maintained that “Siren suits, one-piece and cosily cowled, respond to a profound need of mind and body, to be warmly, safely enclosed against fear and danger no less than against night frosts.”
Designed to fit loosely the siren suit featured a zip or button closure, optional belt, large simple pockets and pleats for ease of movement. Suits could be bought ready to wear or as a paper pattern to be made in whichever fabric was readily available under the rationing system. Particularly popular with women as a way to protect their modesty in air raid shelters, styles varied and women could choose from puffed sleeves, trouser legs pulled in at the ankles and fitted hoods.
Some suits had a rather unusual feature such as the suit I made shown in the photographs below. It’s based on a Butterick sewing pattern and features a panel at the back which could be unbuttoned to allow the wearer to use the toilet without having to remove the garment. The seat panel fastens with three buttons on each side, then a row of four buttons is hidden under a flap all the way across the back waist, allowing the whole section to fold away when undone.
Sounds useful but my guess is you’d need to be heading to the toilet long before you needed to go just to get the buttons undone in time. I’m told its quite awkward to button back up on your own as well!
One of the most famous fans of the siren suit was Winston Churchill, who developed a penchant for the garment, or the romper suit as he preferred to call it. The story goes the heavy boiler suits worn by bricklayers working at his Chartwell Estate caught his eye, leading him to asked his shirtmaker, Turnbull and Asser, to recreate the garment in suit fabric. Churchill was so taken with the results he requested further suits in different fabrics, including green velvet.
Somewhat surprisingly, Churchill was such a fan he wore one to the White House in December 1941. Mrs Roosevelt, possibly in jest, declared at a press conference that week, she was having one made for her husband.
Once the war ended and long cold nights in shelters were a thing of the past, the siren suit was no longer needed for it’s original purpose. But by this point the suit had taken up its place in the history of the one piece garment and continues to live on in modern jumpsuits, overalls and onesies.