This photograph portrays Lillian Sam wearing a Western suit with a handbag and a popular wartime hairstyle. By the mid-1940s, suits became an essential item of Western women’s wardrobe. According to Marielle, most of Lillian’s clothes were matching suits and skirts. Women’s suits at the time were made of firm materials with rigid lines and cuts and were modelled after men’s suits to embody a sense of masculinity and empowerment. Western women in the 1940s often styled their hair in a high pompadour in the front and tied the rest of the hair into a long, U-shaped roll in the back, which matches Lillian’s hairstyle in this photo.