Seventy years ago, the people of Britain swarmed Buckingham Palace, the Mall and Trafalgar Square carrying British flags and jubilant smiles to celebrate the end of the war. <br /><br /> But hardship was not over as the country started to rebuild after the war. <br /><br /> First introduced at the start of the conflict, rationing affected everyday life, including clothing. <br /><br /> Necessity, the saying goes, is the mother of invention. <br /><br /> Now, the Imperial War Museum in London is looking at how fashion survived and even flourished under the strict rules of rationing in 1940’s Britain, often in new and unexpected ways.<br /><br /> “By 1941, the government takes the decision to introduce clothes rationing to a population which is already used to food rationing, for example. This now means that people cannot buy more than, roughly-speaking, one new outfit a year. It drastically reduces the choice that people have in terms of the new clothing that they can buy,” says curator Laura Clouting. <br /><br /> Government-backed schemes lik
