What constituted a “demob suit”?
When British servicemen completed their military service at the end of the Second World War, they went to a demobilisation centre to be “demobbed”. Part of that process involved exchanging their uniforms for a set of civilian clothes, which included two shirts, a hat, a tie, a pair of shoes and the famous “demob suit”, which could either be a double-breasted pinstripe three-piece suit or a single-breasted jacket with flannel trousers. Most of these suits were manufactured by Leeds clothiers, with the Burtons company alone making about a third of all the suits to be produced.
There was no female version. Servicewomen were instead given a cash sum, and – because clothing was still rationed – extra ration coupons to enable them to buy the clothes of their choice.
While some servicemen commented that they were simply exchanging one uniform for another, a large selection of fabric choices was in fact available, with suits in shades of brown and blue and a variety of pinstripe colours.
Reactions to the suits were mixed: some thought the styling old fashioned, while those used to bespoke tailoring disliked the fact that the suits came ready to wear. But for many ex-servicemen, the demob suit was the first suit they had ever owned. One thing the suits did have in their favour was that they were exempt from wartime austerity measures which, for example, restricted the number of pockets and banned turn-ups. As JB Priestley commented, the man in a demob suit was quite literally “a cut above the rest of us”.
Julian Humphrys, military historian and battlefield guide