The women of Nazi Germany tend to bring two images to mind: the blonde, braided, buxom wench in a dirndl dress, and the severe, uniformed party worker.
But a new book by an American academic has tested the reality of these visions of women using previously unstudied papers from the German Fashion Institute and from Nazi organisations set up to remove Jews from the clothing industry.
Professor Irene Guenther of Houston Community College and author of Nazi Chic? Fashioning women in the Third Reich talks to Jenni about what it was like to look at the material from the Nazi period for the first time and how fashion was used as a tool of Nazi policy.
Nazi Chic? Fashioning Women in the Third Reich, published by Berg, ISBN 1 85973 717 X
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