I was inspired to write this piece by all the fuss over Kate Winslet’s claim to be working class because her family had second hand cars and she wore hand -me-downs. Hey Kate – I’ve got news for you – we ALL did!
For those brought up in the 50s, 60s or 70s there was very much a ‘make do and mend’ mentality. Our parents still remembered the war and rationing and believed that you made every penny count. It wasn’t until the 1980s that this all seemed to change. Suddenly people started to believe that it was their right to own new things and therefore they should be allowed to borrow money to buy them. As a child, I knew very few people who had a new car, but that didn’t mean that we were unhappy and wished for something more. We just accepted that this was the way it was.
My parents were very glamorous people and we had a fantastic childhood, attending amazing parties and meeting famous people, but my parents did it all on a budget. They embraced the whole idea of making your money go farther. My father had a second-hand Mini Countryman Estate. My two sisters and I and my parents would all pile in with all our dogs (my mother used to breed dogs to make some extra money to pay for holidays) and set off for a holiday at the seaside (no foreign travel for us ). In order to transport our clothes, my father built a box that he would strap to the roof of the car and we’d pack all our belongings into large plastic bags and lay them neatly in the box, which he would then cover in a large sheet of plastic. Half the excitement was whether we would breakdown or not or whether the box would fall off. This was the true make it and mend it spirit.
My mother was one of those fortunate people who could fashion the original silk purse out of a sow’s ear and used to make all our clothes. I have pictures of us in sweet little dresses that she had made out of our father’s old shirts by simply taking out the sleeves, adding a frill at the bottom and finishing off with lace collars. (Hilary’s the one on the right – Ed)
She knitted amazing sweater dresses that were incredibly fashionable at the time, but she used wool that had been recycled out of my father’s old jumpers to make them. She used to make her own orange squash and marmalade when oranges were cheap, and rustle up a delicious meal from the cheaper cuts of meats. We all looked forward to eating braised breast of lamb – a cut of meat we no longer see these days.
My mother used to go off to first nights of West End shows in her own ‘creations’; thinking nothing of re-fashioning an old item into something new and daring. She would even attend the Royal Garden Parties in her homemade outfits and was delighted when, one year, the Queen herself made a point of coming over to tell her how much she liked her suit – an outfit that had been inspired by a piece of antique lace which had once been part of a theatrical costume.
I also have a very glamorous photograph of my parents taken when they got engaged (above). In it my mother is wearing a coat that she re-fashioned from one of her mother’s old coats. Her mother, my grandmother, also lived with us and embraced this lifestyle. Even as an old lady she would still hand sew her own suits and re-style her old felt hats. In order to reshape felt she had to steam it first to soften it and then mould it over an old wig block. I have vivid memories of her room being filled with clouds of steam and the smell of perfume and cigarettes as she attempted to update a hat for the umpteenth time.
The first thing you are taught in the theatre is that things are never what they seem. There is a theatrical illusory effect called Pepper’s Ghost. Using a plate glass and special lighting techniques, it can make objects seem to appear or disappear, or make one object seem to “morph” into another. And that was very much my childhood. But we weren’t unhappy, we didn’t mind, it didn’t even enter our heads to question our lifestyle. It wasn’t about class, it was about sense and sensibility; making your money go further and literally being creative with what you had. One of the real talents that my parents’ generation had was to find a silver lining in the grimmest of times and maybe the silver lining in this recession is that we can take a lesson from these Make it and Mend it pioneers and learn to reconnect ourselves with some of those skills and values that we seem to have lost.
This is part of our Role Model series
>> I got my ‘make it’ skills from Dad
>> From flying Halifaxes to growing dahlias
