The Utility Clothing Scheme was a programme introduced in the United Kingdom during the Second World War. In response to the shortage of clothing materials and labour due to wartime austerity, the Government's Board of Trade put the Utility Clothing Scheme in place in order to standardise the production, sale, and purchase of clothing in wartime. The Scheme embodied a variety of measures to ensure the availability of fabric, clothing, and shoes, which were proposed to ensure availability, no matter of the consumer’s socioeconomic circumstances.

The creation of Utility clothing meant meeting tight regulations regarding the amount of material allowed to be used in their construction, as per the restrictions of clothes rationing in this period.

Utility clothing, and later Utility furniture, was marked with the CC41 symbol, also known as the Utility mark.

In response to public misconceptions around austerity regulated specifications and the impacts these would have on the fashionability of Utility clothing, designs for a Utility collection were commissioned in 1942 from leading fashion designers, as members of the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers, which included Hardy Amies and Norman Hartnell, amongst others.

The Utility Clothing Scheme ran from 1941 until 1952.

Raw materials and as a result clothing available for civilian consumption were limited due to the needs of the Second World War. Consequently, prices increased and some materials, such as silk, ceased to be available.

While clothes rationing was put in place in Britain on 1st June 1941, where purchasing clothing required the use of clothing coupons alongside monetary payment, there was still disparity in access to clothing. Rationing sought to limit consumption of clothing by the public, however, ‘trading-up’ by both manufacturers and civilian customers to get the most from clothing coupons had drastically increased the cost of living, with shortages in clothing being experienced across the socioeconomic landscape. In order to counteract this, the Utility Clothing Scheme was implemented.

In September 1941, the Government began to impose regulations that took into consideration the economic condition of the country, stating in the second edition of the Clothing Quiz for 1941-1942 that “Special releases of cloth are made for the production of clothing of general utility. The cloth and clothes which are made from it will bear the official mark CC41 the prices at which they can be sold will be controlled and the public will thus find on sale an adequate of clothing in the lower range of prices.”.