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Sylvia dropped her coin purse back into her handbag, scooped up her sandwiches, and left.

When she stepped outside, she found it had started misting with rain. She put her head down and hurried along the pavement to Mrs. Shelton’s front door, hoping her hair would hold up for the short trip. She pushed inside, the bell jangling merrily, and let her eyes sweep over the front of the shop. It was neat as a pin, just as her mother had always insisted it be. Satisfied, she let herself through to the back of the shop.

“I’m here!” Sylvia called out as she entered the workroom. “I brought lunch.”

However, she stopped short when she saw the expression on Miss Reid’s face.

“We have a problem,” said Miss Reid, rising from her sewing machine.

Her shoulders slumped. “Another?”

Surely she should be allowed a little time to recover before the next issue reared its head.

Miss Reid picked up a letter that sat open on the worktable and thrust it at Sylvia.

“Normally I wouldn’t open the post, but Mrs. Moss, who has a shop in Ladbroke Grove, telephoned while you were out asking whether we’d seen the Board of Trade’s new letter. I told her no, and she said we’d want to open it as soon as the post arrived,” said Miss Reid.

Sylvia’s stomach dropped. One of her mother’s fellow dressmakers—and rivals for customers—wouldn’t be ringing about a communication from the Board of Trade unless the news was very grave indeed.

She took the letter from Miss Reid and began to read.

It was a notice from the Board of Trade describing new austerity measures called the Making-Up of Civilian Clothing (Restrictions) Orders that were being put in place as part of the utility clothing scheme. The scheme, which had begun the previous year, dictated everything from the kind of wool that could be produced to the prohibition of leather trimmings. However, this went further. The Board of Trade was now telling the women of Britain how many pleats there could be in a skirt and how many buttons on a jacket or coat. Visible trimmings, pockets, and embellishments were out. The number of seams on a garment, the size of lapels, whether buttons could be covered—all of it was subject to restrictions.

Sylvia looked up with alarm. “Surely this can’t be real.”

“It is. Apparently it’s all to save cloth, as though we weren’t already doing enough of that,” said Miss Reid.

Sylvia kept reading down the page, as Miss Reid muttered, “It’s a travesty. What business does the Board of Trade have telling me whether I can have nine pleats or eight in a skirt?”

She sighed. “It looks as though it’s two inverted or boxed pleats or four knife pleats according to this.”

“It’s like they want to strip away every bit of style we have left and run shops like this one into the ground. It isn’t right,” Miss Reid huffed.

It might have been unpatriotic, but Sylvia couldn’t help but agree. It was one thing to restrict the amount of clothing—and therefore cloth—that a person could buy over the course of a year, but dictating how that clothing was designed felt particularly mean in a time when beauty and pleasure seemed in short supply.

“At least the men haven’t gotten off completely scot-free,” she said with a thin smile. “It looks as though turned-up cuffs on trousers are to be a thing of the past. And the rule about buttons applies to them as well.”

“And what of the things we already have in production?” asked Miss Reid. “It doesn’t make any sense to scrap everything that’s already cut.”

“There must be something about that.” She shuffled through the papers. “Ah, yes. Here it is. Apparently a general license has been released to allow drapers and tailors to continue to produce garments that are ordered before the first of April or cut before the first of May. That should buy us some time to finish what’s already commissioned and underway.”

“But it still doesn’t account for what we’ll do after that,” said Miss Reid.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“None of your mother’s designs take the new rules into account. It means that after the first of April we won’t be able to make and sell the very clothes this shop was built on,” said Miss Reid.

Sylvia’s heart began to beat a little faster. “But surely they can be adapted.”

The seamstress tilted her head in acknowledgment. “Some of them, but not all. Possibly not even many.”

“Why not?”

“It’s pure logic, really. Take an accordion-pleat wool skirt. If the government says new skirts can only have four knife pleats, you can’t make accordion-pleat skirts any longer. Any pattern calling for that would be useless, and something entirely new will have to be dreamed up in its place. Or what about an eight-button suit jacket that now must be two buttons? The entire front would have to be reconstructed, otherwise it won’t close, let alone sit properly on the body. You might as well start again with a new design,” explained Miss Reid.

“But you alter clothing all of the time,” she said.

Miss Reid crossed her arms. “Alterations work with the existing structure of a garment.”