From gladrags to super-rugs
By Brigitte Lechner - 28/12/2006
A faded poster announces ‘Clothes Rationing in Britain’. It is the Rationing Year June 1943 to May 1944. No end to the war in sight, then. Illustrations follow, in faded black and white, showing items of clothing women might buy with their year’s allocation of 48 coupons. A suit for 18 coupons, a sweater for five, a blouse for four, a corset belt or a pair of ‘pantees’ for three.
The year is actually 2006 and we are at the Stockport War Memorial and Art Gallery, my daughter and I, keen to learn about ‘Making Do’. Sheer co-incidence, that. On the way to the gallery, at the entrance to the Memorial Chapel, we came across a sign announcing a ‘Making Do’ event and decided to investigate.
Amid wreathes of red poppies, marble statues and tablets all commemorating the Stockport fallen of both World Wars we spot them, a motley collection of coats, pinafores and dresses on a mobile clothes rack. A closer inspection reveals that each would indeed have been worn by a real person, a mother, or a daughter much like mine. But today, it could be borrowed by a ‘Making Do’ visitor who wants to feel authentic.
My daughter declines to feel authentic and I, alas, am not dainty enough. Our attention is distracted anyway, by two ladies, probably members of the post-war generation, who are keen as blades as well as capable. It’s quite a thrill to watch them step into the role of parts that were once real enough. A cotton-printed pinafore turns one lady into a war-time mum. She does not have a careworn look, though, only a spirited grin on her face. The other lady goes for a silky, oyster-shaded frock with a playful frill as a shoulder trim. Although looking worse for wear or attic storage, this must have been as fetching an outfit as could be worn at the time, for cocktails perhaps.
Mum and cocktail oyster make a bee-line for the craft table in the middle of the chapel. They sit down next to inauthentic as well as authentic visitors - a couple of wartime lads for example - already hard at work ‘Making Do’.
Genuine samples of ‘Making Do’ provisions are spread out all around: a heap of parachute silk that would have been turned into a fair number of silky ‘pantees’, a comely blouse that may have been a bed-sheet, a child’s sweater knitted up from many other discarded sweaters, a beautifully embroidered baby’s bed gown that may once have been a thin blanket. And a lot of Hessian.
The cunning role of Hessian odds and ends heaped nearby is revealed by a perky young housewife who hides her 21st Century haircut under a flowery headscarf knotted at the back. She is the Gallery Assistant and busy demonstrating how unwanted fabrics – old dresses, blouses, sheets - would have been cut into bits and pieces. These would be threaded in, out and about a Hessian foundation and turned into designer rugs, carpets, belts or hand-bags by ‘Making-Do’ champions. ‘Take cast-offs and mix with a dash of creative enthusiasm’, a 21st Century advertisement might trill, ‘and create a totally unique bedside rug your great-great-grandchildren would be stepping on of a morning in a hundred years time’.
Unbelievably trendy things, we soon realise, could be made by cutting up plastic carrier bags so as to crochet or knit them up into hats, handbags, mats or belts. I get ever more excited – ‘water-proof socks?’ I ask, as a surge of creative goodwill explodes in the chapel.
It’s as well to remember, though, that the women of the ‘waste-not-want-not’ school of haute couture made do in order to protect their family from destitution or hunger. How fitting, therefore, that the champions of Making-Do, unnamed though they all are, are brought to mind in the very place that remembers the Daring-Do, beneath gold lettering edged into marble: let those that come after see that these names are not forgotten.
Fortunately, there have been consequences. The surge of creative desire this event unleashed now has me planning my great-great-grandchildren’s bedside rug. And an idea about a trendy jacket is gathering shape by the day. Got lots of carrier-bags to spare, anyone? Any colour will do.