Fabulous prints and dream jobs

Many years ago I met a girl who had recently graduated from a textile and fashion course. She had landed a job with Laura Ashley, researching prints in archives that could be adapted to their range of clothes and home textiles. I once recognised that I needed to look for a new job when I dreamt that I worked in a similar role for Cath Kidston! Coincidentally, the job I found then was as the newly created post of manager of the Old House Museum. There's been a nostalgic retro fashion for nineteen twenties, thirties, forties and fifties prints for many years. I still have some printed silk and crepe dresses bought from charity shops when I was a teenager, and a lovely cotton skirt with a 'how does your garden grow' themed print of cockle shells. No longer wearable, I hang on to them for the sake of the fabric. The Bowes Museum celebrated Laura Ashley's style and archive last year. The Gallery of Costume in Manchester has just held an exhibition of wonderful Ossie Clark dresses, featuring Celia Birtwell's gorgeous prints. The Old House Museum collection of dresses and quilts includes some lovely prints and patterns. This mid nineteenth century dress caught my eye recently.

Whatever happened to this favourite Laura Ashley top?!

Women's work in World War One

This amazing outfit has been on display at the Tourist Information Centre in Bakewell as part of the Old House Museum's World War One commemoration. Made of blue cotton, it once belonged to Hilda Hemsoll. Her name tape is sewn into the hat's lining. She was a member of the Women's National Land Service Corps. There is a tunic, a hat and two pairs of breeches, as well as an armband identifying her with Avery Hill College. The WNLSC was formed as an off shoot of the Women's Farm and Garden Union. It was renamed as the Women's Land Army in 1916. Over 9,000 women worked on the land as members of this initiative during the First World war, taking on the role of men who had gone to fight, in spite of some agricultural roles being exempt from conscription. The design of the smocked tunic and the breeches echoes traditional smocked workwear for agricultural labourers, harking back to the mid-nineteenth century.You can even see the sweat stains in this example of farmer's smock from the Museum's collection! The broad brimmed hat would have protected her from the wind and the rain as well as providing shade from the sun.

We don't have any more information about Hilda Hemsoll at the Museum, but she has left us a wonderful glimpse into one working woman's life in the First World War.

Monday's Washing Day

The sun is shining and it's a Monday morning. I have a full load of washing in my automatic washing machine and I am looking forward to drying it outside on the line. The Old House Museum in Bakewell offers a very different laundry experience to visiting school groups. Mangles and maidens, dolly tubs and possers. Water had to be heated in a copper boiler by the fire. Washboards, later made good use of in skiffle groups, were used to work the dirt and soap out of clothes.

Monday was traditionally washing day, when the kitchen was turned over to soap and steam. When I was a student I lived in an area of West Yorkshire where this traditional pattern was still enforced. Washing lines were hung across the road of terraced houses on a Monday, and woe betide anyone who drove a vehicle through them! Later I lived in an Edwardian house in Manchester, with a purpose built outbuilding for use as a laundry. There was a fireplace, a copper, runnels in the stone floor and pulleys for a clothes rack above the fireplace. We didn't use it as a laundry, but it was a link with the wash houses of the past. I invested in a traditional wooden clothes rack with pulleys and still use it in the house where I live now, though it's no longer above the fireplace in the kitchen. I also still have a couple of wooden maidens or clothes horses, bought in West Yorkshire all those years ago. I still use them to put in front of the open fire for washing to dry overnight. Cleanliness is next to godliness they used to say. Twin tubs, automatic mangles, laundries and laundrettes, automatic washing machines, electric dryers, washer/dryers. The technology has come on in leaps and bounds. Talking of leaps and bounds, my twin tub used to vibrate its way across the kitchen, and the hoses had a habit of leaping off the sink or tap as a result! Some of you must remember having to hold them down while the spin dryer was running. And did anyone have a Flatley electric dryer? It was a great invention and we had one in our wash house as we were growing up. Generations of children are unfamiliar with the dangers of the mangle. I know people who learnt the hard way.

It's still a challenge to get the washing dry when we have a wet spell of weather. Dryers are expensive and there's nothing like seeing washing drying on a line. Outdoor rotary dryers come with covers nowadays. There's a whole industry based on making washing smell as if it has been line dried! We have made the journey from wash house to utility room, but it is still takes planning to keep on top of the washing. I haven't even mentioned the ironing! When you visit the Old House Museum and see the dolly tub and the mangle, spare a thought for those generations of women whose lives were dominated by Monday as washing day.

Fabulous Forties Fashion

The Old House Museum threw a forties fashion party on a wet Saturday afternoon. Tea, cakes and lots of hats to try on all added to the fun and the photo opportunities. Anita, the museum manager, looked fantastic in a fabulous floral frock. There were one or two land girls and other visitors who had dressed for the occasion. Sadly there were no siren suits, the forties version of the onesie! Forties fashion is interesting for a variety of reasons. The Museum's own collection reflects mid 19th through to early 20th century styles. The forties clothes were still being worn when the Museum first opened its doors in the 1950s! War time and rationing had a big impact on fashion. Restrictions on material and trimmings created a simpler Utility style, with a military cut to jackets and suits. Make do and mend was the order of the day. Paris was occupied and the fashion world looked to the USA for ideas. Sportswear started to have an influence on design, still important today and Hollywood glamour took a back seat. British designers were allowed to export couture designs. One of the visitors on Saturday wore an amazing outfit, with a dramatic fitted black coat, a stunning hat and a wonderful lemon yellow suit. The suit could have been designed for the American market with its vibrant colour.

The coat has a label sewn into the lining, and my research tells me that this was the luxury export Utility label. It certainly looked a million dollars!

Fancy Dress

The Old House Museum in Bakewell is an independent award winning museum with a fantastic collection relating to the town and its surrounding area. Everything in the collection has been donated. There is too much to display at any one time, so decisions are made each season to create exhibitions and displays that highlight the variety of items in the museum. Inevitably this means that some things are kept in storage, carefully looked after and catalogued, but not always shared. This blog will be a way of sharing some of the amazing clothes and textiles in the collection. Sometimes they have been given to the museum with a personal story that relates to the fashions of the day, the social conventions of the time or a particular life event. An article of clothing can tell us so much. The Gallery of Costume, housed at Platt Hall in Manchester, holds a collection second only to the V&A. The Old House Museum has a remarkable collection of clothes, textiles, sewing ephemera and stories that can be shared through posts and photographs in the same way that these better known public collections are publicised through social media. It's hoped that greater awareness of the collection will encourage new visitors, fashion fans and design students, lovers of vintage clothes and anyone else with a passion for fashion. On Saturday 7th June there is a forties themed afternoon event at the museum to get the ball rolling. Hope to see you there!