We get asked about this one more than almost anything else we sell. Somebody will be scrolling through our shirts, stop dead on the “Thousands of Women Needed Now” design, and send us a message. What is this? Where’s it from? Is it real?
Yes, it’s real. It’s a wartime recruitment poster, and there’s a proper story behind it. So we thought we would finally sit down and tell it.
What the poster is actually asking for
Read the words on the shirt and you’ll spot two names: the ATS and the WAAF. Nobody says the full versions out loud any more, so here they are. The ATS was the Auxiliary Territorial Service, which was the women’s side of the British Army. The WAAF was the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, the women’s side of the RAF.
The rest of the poster tells you the work was “vital to the offensive,” and to go and get “full information at the nearest recruiting centre or your employment exchange.” An employment exchange was more or less an old job centre. Strip all that back and the message is simple. We need you, and here is where to go.
Why they needed so many women, so fast
When the Second World War kicked off in 1939, huge numbers of men left their ordinary jobs to go and fight. That left holes all over the place. Factories were short-handed. Farms were short-handed. The armed forces themselves needed people to keep everything ticking over behind the scenes.
For a while, women volunteered. But the country needed far more hands than volunteering could bring in. So in December 1941 Britain started calling women up by law. That had never been done before, anywhere. Most women could pick between working in a factory or joining one of the services like the ATS or the WAAF, but sitting it out wasn’t really on the table any more.
And these were not small jobs
This is the part that surprises people. The women who signed up weren’t just making tea. They drove trucks, ambulances and staff cars. They serviced aircraft and kept them flying. They worked on the anti-aircraft gun crews that helped defend the skies. Some wrote up the weather reports the pilots depended on, and a few even ran the code-breaking machines at Bletchley Park, the secret site that helped bring the whole war to an end sooner.
The numbers are hard to believe. More than 250,000 women passed through the ATS, which made it the biggest women’s service of the war. The WAAF had around 182,000 members by 1943. The Women’s Royal Naval Service, better known as the Wrens, had roughly 74,000. That’s a lot of ordinary women doing extraordinary things.
Why it still means something
Here’s what gets us about it. Before the war, plenty of people flat out said women couldn’t do this sort of work. The women went and did it anyway, and did it well. Once that happened, there was no un-seeing it. The way the whole country thought about what women could do shifted, and it never really shifted back.
So when someone wears this poster on a shirt, they’re not just wearing a nice old picture. They’re carrying a small reminder of a lot of brave, hard-working women who stepped up when it counted. We think that’s worth something.
Wearing it, and the rest of what we make
Which brings us round to what we actually do. At Expressionize (that’s our shop, over at www.expressionize.com) we take classic and vintage posters and print them onto shirts you can wear every day. The idea is pretty simple. If you love a bit of old art, you shouldn’t have to leave it stuck on a wall.
This design is only one of loads. We’ve got a big collection of old war recruitment posters from both world wars, plus stacks of other vintage and classic poster art. History teachers buy them. Collectors buy them. And plenty of people buy them just because they look good, which is a perfectly fine reason as far as we’re concerned.
Every design comes in eight sizes, from Small right up to 5XL. I’m a bit particular about that, because there’s nothing worse than falling for a design and then finding it doesn’t come in your size. Here, it does.
Finding the one you want
There are two easy ways to track down a design. If you like a browse, look for the “Vintage Posters” tab tucked inside the “Classic Art & Posters” menu on the site. It’s all laid out and ready to go through.
If you already know roughly what you’re after, just use the search bar in the top menu and type a word or two. Try “ATS,” “WAAF,” or “war poster,” or whatever else is on your mind, and it’ll pull up the matches. While you’re poking around, have a look at our university and college range too. We carry a huge spread of those, so if you want to fly the flag for your old school, we’ve probably got you covered.
A quick word on how these are made
You might see us mention print on demand and DTG, which stands for direct to garment. Bit of jargon, we know, but it’s good news for you, so here’s the short version.
Print on demand means we don’t print your shirt until you actually order it. Nothing sits boxed up in a warehouse going out of fashion, and we’re not churning out mountains of stock that end up thrown away. Less waste, which is better for everyone.
The DTG part is about how the design goes on. Think of it like a really good inkjet printer, except it prints straight onto fabric. The ink soaks into the cotton instead of sitting on top like one of those thick rubbery stickers, so you get all the fine lines and little bits of detail from the original poster. It feels soft too, and it moves with the shirt rather than cracking across your chest. Wash it inside out in cool water and it’ll stay looking sharp for a long time.
Go on, have a look
The women of the ATS and the WAAF answered the call when their country asked. The least we can do is keep telling their story. If you fancy carrying a piece of it around, head over to www.expressionize.com, open the “Classic Art & Posters” menu, and click the “Vintage Posters” tab. Or just search for what you want. Then pick your size, anywhere from Small to 5XL, and we’ll print it up for you. Simple as that.