The Roanoker - March/April 2019 - 15

S T R A N G E D AY S O F R O A N O K E

What excited the high-brow in the salons of Paris
and New York did not play well in middle-class
America. The "Little Below the Knees" Club movement
started with model Bobbie Woodward in Dallas, Texas,
who said, "Whoever dreamed up this fall's gruesome
styles have been reading too many historical novels."
She was quickly joined by others, including Coco
Channel. A woman in Georgia tried to catch a bus,
had her long skirt caught in the door, and had to run
beside the bus a city block before the driver realized
what was happening. Soon, Little Below the Knees
Clubs began forming across the United States. The
women, valuing the higher hemlines for a variety of
reasons, became known as LBKers.
The LBkers were not just protesting fashion. They
were advocating an early form of women's rights in
the workplace. Some large businesses were demanding
female employees wear the longer skirts, not because
they knew anything of Dior's runways in Paris but they
thought the more modest look was professional. Thus,
LBK Clubs got legs - literally.
Mrs. P.M. Dillon of Roanoke organized Roanoke's
LBK Club in the summer of 1947. She was soon joined
by literally hundreds of other women from around the
region, many of whom submitted petitions they had
circulated at offices and factories to pre-empt any
workplace regulations on feminine attire.
All this interest ultimately led to an LBK parade
in Roanoke on September 6. Leading the procession
was Dillon, Mrs. Clyde St. Clair, Mrs. J.W. Clemmer
and five-year-old Susie Kaplan. They and the women
who followed dressed in decades-old clothing, making
the point that long skirts were for their grandmothers,
not the modern woman. Two women, perched on a fire
engine, paraded in bathing suits. Some one hundred
women participated in the march.
A sound system, donated by Hobbie Brothers,
pounded the message "Join the LBK today!" Kann's, a
local downtown dress shop, sponsored a float carrying
LBKers wearing fashionable hemlines that conformed
to LBK standards.
Aubrey Kessler drove a truck in the parade filled
with men claiming to be members of the "League
of Broke Husbands." Nationally, the LBH was the
male counterpart of the LBK, as husbands decried
the expense of having to buy their wives entirely new
wardrobes to conform to The New Look.
A downpour had delayed the start of the 3 p.m.
event, but once it started, an estimated 7,000 spectators
lined the parade route. The Roanoke Times reported,
"Office workers hung out the windows and the crowd
was as thick at Elmwood Park, where the parade
disbanded, as it was at the municipal building, the
assembling point."
Among those watching were a group of young men
encouraging young women to join what they called
TheRoanoker.com

the LAK Club - "Little
Above the Knee."
Humor aside, Roanoke
retailers were hedging
their bets. A display ad
in The Roanoke Times
for Heironimus, that
was holding its annual
fall fashion show at the
Hotel Roanoke later that
week, read, "The hemline
question isn't just one of
more inches, at all - skirt
lengths will differ with the
occasion, the fabric, the
silhouette and - above all -
you. Certainly in a season
of such fashion variation,
we believe it wise to
choose your clothes at a
store of sound fashion
authority and standards
of good taste." Kann's
advertised "You are the
fashion at Kann's...wear
them your most becoming
length," though the
sketched models were all
attired in The New Look.
The Roanoke LBKers
not only paraded, but also
petitioned. Among the documents collected by the
informal group was a petition signed by 435 female
employees at the Roanoke plant of the American
Viscose against a possible lengthened hemline policy.
Roanoke's parade was not unique. LBKers held
parades in cities and towns throughout the United
States. The short-lived LBK movement was part levity
and part women's rights in a post-war American
workplace.
Over time, Marcel Boussac and Christian Dior won
out. Their "Corolle" line of women's fashion became
widely accepted by the public and copied by leading
designers throughout the 1950s. The LBK Club in
Roanoke, like all in the nation, evaporated as actresses,
models, magazine editors and female executives
embraced the tea-length style re-birthed by a leading
fashion house in post-war Paris.
The editors of Vogue correctly predicted at the
time about Boussac and Dior's new style, "There are
moments when fashion changes fundamentally...This
is one of those moments."
Thus for one September Saturday in 1947 Roanoke
had its own moment when women's legs were not just
the hit of the parade, they were the parade. I

ABOVE

Some women wore
bathing suits in the
parade to protest
"grandma clothes."
FACING PAGE, TOP LEFT

Leaders of Roanoke's
LBK Club prepare
to lead the parade
through downtown
Roanoke.
FACING PAGE, TOP RIGHT

A September 1947
Kann's ad showing
"The New Look" with
the longer, post-war
hemline.

-NELSON HARRIS

MARCH/APRIL 2019

15
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