HORRIBLE Histories: Blitzed Brits proved a huge success at Trafford’s Imperial War Museum – and now the spotlight has now turned to wartime fashion.

From May 27, IWM North will present the major exhibition Fashion on the Ration: 1940s Street Style, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of clothes rationing.

This exhibition will explore how fashion survived and even flourished under the strict rules of rationing and how, despite the restrictions, austerity did not put an end to creative design or fashionable trends on the British home front.

Fashion on the Ration: 1940s Style brings together exhibits, including clothes, accessories, photographs and film, official documents and publications, artworks, wartime letters, interviews and ephemera, some of which have never been on display before.

Curator Amanda Mason said: “Exploring the clothes that people wore throughout the 1940s gives us a whole new understanding and insight into life in Britain during and immediately after the Second World War. The exhibition also makes us think about the way we dress today and how British style is till influenced by wartime and the changes it brought to the fashion industry.”

To celebrate the launch of the exhibition, the museum will be hosting a free ‘Vintage Fashion Weekender’ on June 4 and 5.

Julie Summers, author of Fashion on the Ration, will be giving a talk and signing copies of her book and fragrance historian Lizzie Ostrom, aka Odette Toilette, will be leading a fragrance tour of the exhibition on the Saturday.

On both days, modern milliner and ‘make do and mend’ expert Mary Jane Baxter will bring her craft campervan, Bambi, to offer workshops on how to upcycle old tshirts into turbans.

Previously a BBC foreign correspondent, Mary Jane has reported on the make-do-and-mend trend for Newsnight and was a presenter on Paul Martin's Handmade Revolution.

Tickets for Fashion on the Ration: 1940s Style are on sale now; visit iwm.org.uk.