If I had a bottle of Moet for every time I'd heard the word
" Austerity " used in the last few months, well, I'd have enough to see me through the depression of 2009. And no more evident is it than in the re-interpretation of what for a very long time was the relatively little known war poster "Keep calm and carry on."

At this point I think it's appropriate to tell you a liitle more about this lovely piece of copy. The poster was designed by the Ministry of Defence in the early 40's, in preperation for what everyone believed was the immenent invasion of Blighty by Hitler. So the message " Keep calm and carry on" was meant to focus the nation's minds on the present whilst presumably reminding everyone that we British are famous for our stiff upper lip (and the small matter of a nazi invasion was not the kind of thing to get flustered over). As it was the invasion never happened and all of the posters were pulped, well, almost all of the posters.

Fast forward several decades to the purchase of a box of old books, bought at auction by the owners of, what the New Statesman magazine describe as "The British library of secondhand bookshops" the excellent Barter Books.

Sorting through their latest purchase they discovered perhaps the only surviving "keep calm" poster, and they decided to frame it and display it in their bookshop (which is, to this day housed in the old railway station in Alnwick, Northumberland).

The reaction to the poster took them by surprise. Their customers loved it. So much so that they were persuaded to produce facsimiles which sold like hot cakes. As did the mugs, the mouse mats and practically everything else they reproduced the line on. Finally they did a deal with a big cool t shirt manufacturer who reproduced the poster in all kinds of shapes and sizes bringing the "lost" poster message to the masses.

In an earlier post I showed Louis Vuitton mimicking the line as a very early anti-credit crunch message with their version:
"Keep calm and spend more."

And now the message has crossed the pond with the American t- shirt site, Threadless, producing their own version which reads:
"Now panic and freak out".

This really only works if you've seen the original so I guess millions of people now have.

Hope my favourite second hand and antiquarian bookshop is getting a cut. In these difficult times every penny counts.