Nottingham Trent Uni student designs lingerie inspired by wartime letters

May 29, 2015 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News

Chloe Bampton, 21, studies Fashion Design at Nottingham Trent Uni
Student, from Dullingham, East Cambridgeshire, created feminist range
‘Forget Me Not’ is inspired by grandparents, Dennis and Kathleen Algar
Dennis was a Japanese POW and worked on the Burma-Thailand railway

Maybelle Morgan For Mailonline

and
Luisa Metcalfe For Mailonline

Published:
05:58 EST, 27 May 2015

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Updated:
06:14 EST, 27 May 2015

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A student fashion designer inspired by her grandparents’ wartime love letters has created a line of vintage-looking lingerie focused on nostalgia and romance – not sex.

Chloe Bampton, 21, from Dullingham, East Cambridgeshire, created her collection, Forget Me Not, as an alternative to modern day lingerie, which she says is too preoccupied with trying to shock.

But behind the stylish range of silk pieces and flowing kimono-style robes is a story of separation, suffering and enduring love.

Chloe Bampton, 21 (pictured), created the collection after becoming inspired by her grandparents’ love letters

Chloe’s late grandparents, Dennis and Kathleen Algar wrote each other hundreds of letters during World War II

Chloe, a fashion design student at Nottingham Trent University, said a chest of letters sent between her grandparents Dennis and Kathleen Algar, reveal an insight into the dificulties newlyweds faced during the Second World War and was at the heart of her new collection.

Chloe, who’s studying at the university’s School of Art and Design, said: ‘When you read through their letters you imagine yourself in a different way of life completely.

‘They are so romantic. We’ve lost touch with the era of hand letter writing and courting and I wanted to design lingerie which provided an alternative to the modern day shock element.

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She added: ‘The designs are aimed at women looking for very feminine luxury lingerie with an old romance feel.’

The couple were married in October, 1941, only a matter of weeks before Dennis, a private in the 1st Battalion Cambridgeshire Regiment, was sent off to fight.

But within months of his tour he was captured by the Japanese and held prisoner for nearly four years.

Lingerie collection, Forget Me Not, is inspired by wartime love letters and was created by Nottingham Trent student, Chloe Bampton

Chloe wanted to create luxury lingerie with an old-romance feel

Their letters reveal a couple deeply in love, with their notes including endearments such as Dennis’s line that he’s ‘just dying to be back with you again.’

In another, addressing a difficulty Kathleen was experiencing, he wrote, ‘but as I tell you darling, keep your chin up and keep smiling however hard it may seem’.

In one letter, he wrote to her in his elegant script: ‘It brought everything back very vividly and gosh sweetheart does it hurt. I’ve got so many little memories of you darling that you’ll always be very near in my mind.’

His bride signed one of her typed missives, ‘I will love you forever darling.’

Chloe explained: ‘The majority of the letters we have are from the time Dennis was still in the UK stationed at different barracks, after he left the UK he was still able to write and receive letters but they were much less frequent and were censored by the Japanese.

‘You can see big scribble marks through parts of some of his letters home. There was also a period of 18 months when there was no contact from Dennis when his battalion was missing.

‘Kathleen worked in a shop at the start of the war and then in the air ministry.’

As a Japanese prisoner of war, Dennis laboured on the notorious Burma-Thailand railway, dubbed the ‘death railway’ after more than 12,000 Allied POWs died while being forced to build it.

Chloe said: ‘Dennis helped to build the Burma-Thailand railway, he kept a diary of everything going on in the camps but his commanding officer made him dispose of it in the latrine as it was posing a risk of punishment to everybody.

‘They were fed only rice and only got meat when they caught animals themselves in the camp. The was no proper medical care. If they collapsed while building the railway they weren’t allowed to stop and help their friends.

Chloe’s lingerie collection (left) was inspired by the old-fashioned romance of the letter writing (right)

The 21-year-old wanted to design lingerie which provided an alternative to the modern day shock element

‘Dennis suffered with malaria a lot in the time he was prisoner and after a particularly bad time had to sell his signet ring that my grandmother had given him so that he could buy food from the locals to build up his strength again.’

After he returned to England, he and Kathleen went on to have three children and six grandchildren and Dennis documented his experiences in his book, East Anglia To The Far East, which was published locally in 1985.

The labels for Chloe’s Forget-Me-Not collection was inspired by the stamps on her grandparents wartime letters

Dennis died aged 81 in 2000 and Kathleen died six years later at the age of 85.

Chloe said: ‘He would talk about his experiences a little but not in much depth to my mum and her siblings but I’m not sure how much he talked about it with my grandmother, he wasn’t particularly closed off on the subject but would never go into much detail.’

There is also a serious element to her range.

Some of the lingerie features straps which cross in reference to the railway tracks between Burma and Thailand.

Chloe also researched Japanese traditional dress and incorporated it into her designs, while the fabrics used are intended to look slightly worn.

‘It was about taking something which is hard-hitting and turning it into something beautiful,’ she said.

‘Some of my pieces were inspired by the shape of 1940s and vintage-style underwear with the longline bra and the floaty French knicker-style set but mostly I took inspiration from the soft pastel colours of the underwear rather than the structure itself.’

The student also added a feminist twist to her range, focusing her dissertation on the ‘importance of underwear in relation to the female self’.

‘It was about taking something which is hard-hitting and turning it into something beautiful’, said Chloe, who wanted the collection to evoke nostalgia

The fashion design student took the personal, heart-warming story of her grandparents to inspire her collection

She added: ‘From my research I decided I wanted to do something different to most lingerie advertisements and make my collection all about romance and nostalgia instead of sex, which occupies most brands.

‘I wanted to photograph my collection on a model with a small bust to challenge the stereotype of lingerie models.

‘I also wanted the photoshoot and underwear itself to be aimed more at women rather than it needing to appeal to a man.

‘I want my lingerie to be something special that a woman would buy to please herself.’

The student designer is sure Dennis and Kathleen would have been fans of her collection.

She said: ‘I think both my grandparents would have liked that something positive and beautiful had come from a time which for them was really hard.

‘I think my grandma would have loved it, she was always very interested in clothes and fashion right up until she passed away.

‘She would have loved the colours as they were some of her favourites and the brand name was also based around her and the story as the forget-me-not was her favourite flower. And obviously the time they spent apart, in the letters there were many mentions about not forgetting each other.’

Chloe has even used the stamps on the envelopes of the letters her grandparents exchanged on her Forget Me Not labels.

And she incorporated their endearments on the garments’ price tags and in her look books, using the couples’ sign-offs and and words of love including: ‘All my love always darling’; ‘all my kisses’; ‘my own precious darling’; ‘next to you I miss your letters more than anything’ and ‘for always my sweetheart’.

Chloe’s collection is set to go on display during the 2015 Nottingham Trent University Degree Show

The lingerie features straps (right) which cross in reference to the railway tracks between Burma and Thailand which her grandfather helped build while he was held captive

It was her first foray into underwear design after finding her previous designs all seemed to be influenced by underwear.

She said: ‘I thought, why not try designing an actual underwear collection, which I found came so much more naturally to me than designing womenswear or menswear.’

Gilly Staples, course leader in Fashion Design at Nottingham Trent University, said: ‘Chloe has taken the heart-warming, personal story of her grandparents and used it to reimagine the way we see lingerie today.

‘She has combined traditional Japanese dress and the themes of war to create something unique and romantic.’

Chloe’s collection, Forget Me Not, is set to go on public display alongside a host of other student design works during the 2015 Nottingham Trent University Degree Show between 29 May to 6 June.

The annual shows repeatedly feature graduating students who go on to claim prizes at some of the most prestigious competitions in the UK including awards at Graduate Fashion Week, New Designers London, DAD and Free Range.