Fashion on the Ration

A primary school memory kicked back to the forefront of my brain by What Katie Did

Countess Mountbatten's map underwear as featured in What Katie Did Magazine issue 3

After buying my birthday underwear from What Katie Did it turns out Kev is now subscribed to their magazine, which was of course handed straight to me, as he is well past the age of flipping through lingerie magazines!

It turns out it's quite an interesting little read, as well as detailing their new collections (I actually really like the hybrid power mesh corslet) there are also a couple of small articles in there, and one of them is entitled "Fashion on the Ration."

Fashion on the Ration is about a temporary exhibit at The Imperial War Museum in London, that I would very much like to see but probably won't be able to due to lack of funds, it's about wartime street fashions during World War 2, and one of the photos is of Countess Mountbatten's lingerie made from a silk map that was given to her by her boyfriend in the RAF and it reminded me of when I was in year 2 at Primary School (for those unfamiliar with the English - it's different in Scotland, not sure about Wales and Northern Ireland-  schooling system, year 2 is not the second year of primary school, it's actually the third, and we go there between the ages of 6 and 7), and TV time happened once a week.

During this term we were watching Look and Read's Spywatch

The whole series is up on youtube, and bar a mild bit of cheesiness it's still worth a watch.

Every so often before TV time we'd be shown something that related to what we were about to watch and learn about it, and in one episode of Spywatch someone in a parachute (assumed to be a Nazi spy) lands near by.

This TV time one of the teachers from another class brought in a real World War 2 parachute, or what was left of it anyway, it had lots of little holes in it where it had been used as fabric to make underwear!

She explained that her mother and grandmother had collected it when a plane had crashed near by during a dogfight and the pilot had escaped in a parachute, which later got tangled in a tree. I don't recall weather the pilot was British or German or even survived (this was TV time twenty years ago after all!), but I do remember her saying that even clothing was rationed during the war and almost everything was recycled, so if a couple of metres of silk landed in your back garden you'd use them!