Although the depiction of barbed wire in a dress fabric may seem surprising, the motif appears in Moore’s work as early as 1939 in his drawings and graphic work on the theme of the Spanish Prisoner. These were made in aid of the plight of Republican refugees fleeing Franco’s Spain who were being held in French detention camps. Since Moore was at the forefront of the British Surrealist movement in the 1930s, the irony of using a barbed wire design for a silk dress would not have been lost on him. In these textiles, Moore uses the barbed wire as a compositional device to visually thread through the fabric. Another Moore fabric design (HMF 2138a) alternates barbed wire with reclining figures, but this was not put into production. Here, the industrial post-war imagery of barbed wire is broken by wildflowers in various colourways, perhaps an affirmation of life after devastation. Moore later served as Chairman of the Auschwitz Memorial Committee in 1958.

There are no known sketches directly related to the barbed-wire fabric, although Textile Design 1943 (HMF 2136) may be an initial study, with the barbed wire clearly visible and circular apertures for the flowers left incomplete.