Make Do and Mend by Ministry of Information

It is also suggested that “regular handwork classes” in schools and elsewhere should pay more attention to “mending and making do”, and that short courses of instructions should be available to teachers. : Courses of practical instruction are said to have been very successful in London, Wiltshire, and parts of Wales, and it is suggested that classes run by the Women's Institutes or other women's organisations, should “be inaugurated throughout the country.” “Expert advice” should be available at these classes, which, besides the renovation of clothes, should include instruction on the repair of household utensils. The advertisements should be “more startling and conspicuous - one should be able to see them without looking for them.” It is suggested that they should be either “written up in the body of the magazine, like the usual beauty page”, with coloured plates or they should be simpler and more striking, “with slogans in bold type (four Regions).

In four reports it is suggested that they should be placed “in the local paper, which is the family journal, and read more thoroughly by members of most households.” It is also suggested that the advertisements should be placed in the daily as well as the Sunday newspapers (six Regions). : The following ideas have been put forward for improving the advertisements and ensuring that they reach a wider public: “Women's papers are hard to come by now for the casual purchaser who has not got a standing order”, and are therefore not read by a great number of people (two Regions). To the majority of working-class housewives, “mending and making do is nothing new” while among the poorest families, the quality of clothes bought, which are mostly secondhand, does not “warrant the time spent on elaborate mending” (four Regions).

“Most women have little time nowadays for elaborate mending and making do” (six Regions).

Make Do and Mend by Ministry of Information