Natasha Cain
MAKE DO AND MEND
Inspired by my own personal Heritage and the past it holds this A/W 18 collection is based on the Isle of Man during WW1 and WW2. During these periods of time the Island was used to hold internees at various internment camps around the island. This once beautiful sunny holiday-makers paradise, had quickly been turned into an island of aliens behind barbed wire. The Men and Women who were sent to the island were a mixture of German, French and other nationalities, who were classed as Category A and could have been a threat to the United Kingdom during the War.
The camps were surrounded by tons of metres of barbed wire to keep the internees guarded, during the war the Isle of man was otherwise known as ‘the Island of Barbed Wire’ due to this. This is an aspect which is incorporated into the garments in different ways, such as with silver hardware and attachments and various hints of prints.
Make do and mend is a key part of this collection, during the war, civilians and internees were given rations for food and clothing. These allowances didn’t quite cover them to be able to buy new clothes. Due to this, Make do and Mend was a way Britain tried to maintain clothes and create interesting new styles by using old worn clothes which they already owned. This is incorporated throughout the collection with the use of different materials and textures, mending to the fabrics and the use of interesting shapes and silhouette’s.
From looking at the Archives at the Manx Museum of the Internment Camps and the Islands own resident’s personal memorabilia’s of the time, the collection has a deep depth of background images and notes to gain a real feel of how life was in these camps for the internees.
This AW18 collection concentrates on merging styles taken from the internees and guards, intertwining them with the theme make do and mend. Cohesively bringing in the manx nationality and heritage as the foundations of this collections is an overall look of how the designers merges the styles taken from the internment camps with the theme make do and mend. Bringing in the manx nationality and heritage as the foundations of this collection.