As I cycled home from work yesterday, I came across something odd. It was a teenage girl, only she was well groomed, impeccably dressed and wore her hair in a bob. Are teenagers not meant to look spotty and out of place, I wondered? As London Fashion Week returns to the city this week, has sartorial fever finally gripped our adolescents?

Not quite. Today’s young ’uns are empirically more elegant than we were — a result, some say, of TikTok, where the algorithm subsumes sartorially unfriendly cultures to the benefit of a safer, dominant aesthetic. It holds up, but I would like to propose another theory. Trends tend to work in 30-year cycles. Thirty years ago was 1996. Whereas I was stuck with mod haircuts and skinny jeans at the age of 15, 30 years on from 1983, today’s teenagers are donning camisoles, suede jackets and slacks à la Kate Moss and Johnny Depp. QED.

2026 has inspired comparisons to 1976 (hot summer, bleak economy) and 1999 (stock-market exuberance fuelled by only a handful of tech companies). These were also years remembered for the majesty of their fashion: think Cher in suedes and feathered bodysuits by the dearly departed Bob Mackie, or Gwyneth Paltrow in that Donna Karen ensemble. Fashion is only free to go off the rails when the economy is soaring, because people will buy it anyway. The 1980s, fittingly, is still known as the decade that style forgot. Where The City saw a Big Bang, most wardrobes faced a Big Bust.

In a more uncertain climate, customers are forced to become more discerning. Designers, for their part, are expected to take fewer risks. A cynic might call this boring — the death of creativity — but history suggests otherwise. Designers are often at their best when finding freedom within constraint.

Reining in excess allows the details to take centre-stage (see Tom Ford’s tenure at Gucci, 1994–2004), a commercially savvy idea in an era where the snapshots of an outfit — think Chanel’s recent barefoot sandals — go viral more easily than the overall ensemble. Reuse and timelessness also become more important, as they ought to. In perhaps the only upshot of economic downturn, this weekend’s collections are expected to be a triumph.

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

If Burberry has come to signify a quintessentially British style, it also represents the quicksilver nature of national identity, for, even in our class-conscious society, the brand has been adopted as a uniform across the social divide, spanning grouse moors and football terraces, worn by everyone from the late Duke of Edinburgh to Liam Gallagher.

Indeed, the company’s signature check became front-page news in 2002 after the EastEnders soap star Danniella Westbrook was snapped with her baby daughter in co-ordinating head-to-toe outfits, complete with a matching pram. ‘CHAVTASTIC!’ declared The Sun at the time, with gleeful delight.

Yet, despite solemn nay-sayers predicting the death of the brand, it continued to flourish, doubtless helped by the fact that it remained admirably practical for country sporting pursuits, with a durability evident in Elizabeth II’s hardworking Burberry raincoats.

‘Icon’ is a hackneyed term in fashion and, indeed, the wider culture, but it does seem to me appropriate for the title of the exhibition opening on September 21 at the V&A Museum. ‘The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon’ celebrates the brand’s 170th anniversary, tracing its history from 19th-century artisanship to the contemporary runways of London Fashion Week.

Founded in 1856 by Thomas Burberry — an enterprising 21-year-old draper who established his eponymous outfitters in Basingstoke in Hampshire — the business expanded thanks to his patented 1879 invention of weatherproof gabardine (a sturdy material that is still woven today in Yorkshire).

In 1891, Burberry opened its first flagship store on London’s Haymarket, followed by Paris in 1909 and Buenos Aires in 1912. The polar explorer Ernest Shackleton took it even further afield, wearing Burberry gabardine on his Antarctic expeditions in the early 20th century.

During the First World War, the brand’s gabardine coats acquired their famous military associations, advertised as ‘trenches’ that would be repaired free of charge for serving officers. Burberry was successful, too, in appealing to adventurous women, designing female mountaineering outfits as early as 1908 and for the pioneering aviator Betty Kirby-Green in the 1930s. This, perhaps, was the beginning of a subtle shift towards transatlantic chic, when Hollywood film stars such as Greta Garbo began wearing trench coats, suggesting an androgynous, yet glamorous mystique.

By the 1960s, the pendulum of fashion had swung back again to London, and Burberry’s signature check, originally introduced in the 1920s as a coat-lining, began appearing on accessories and umbrellas, exported around the world as jaunty emblems of a semi-imaginary English landscape.

Patrick Lichfield’s advertising campaigns added a charmingly graceful touch, depicting Burberry-clad models in the picturesque gardens of country houses (including the maze at Hever Castle, Kent) or alongside the Household Cavalry.

Several generations of the Royal Family remained loyal to Burberry — from George VI and the Queen Mother to the young Prince Charles and Princess Diana — and Catherine, the current Princess of Wales, has followed their example.

Yet the appropriation of the brand as subversive streetwear, embraced by mods, punks and the Britpop stars of the 1990s, has revealed its chameleon-like capacity to shape-shift through successive decades.

In an era in which some commentators are prone to dwell on the divisions in our society, I find it reassuring that Thomas Burberry’s egalitarian vision of robust textiles and tailoring still endures. Remarkably, his legacy has not fossilised into a fusty form of nostalgia; instead, it has proved to have the resilience and flexibility to run like a thread through our shared sartorial heritage, as well as forming new patterns, and standing boldly at the cutting edge of taste.

In this sense, it has a delightful quality in common with Country Life —and so I urge readers of all ages to search dusty attics or muddy boot rooms for forgotten trench coats and sally forth, as gallant Britannic ambassadors, with heads held high.

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

It felt, until recently, as if things might be over for London Fashion Week. Since Brexit, the consensus among industry titans has been to skip the city and fly straight to Milan in Italy, where audience figures have been growing year on year.

However, a changing of the guard at the British Fashion Council and a breath of Cool Britannia 2.0 means the wafer-thin programme is bulking out once more.

Scottish designer Christopher Kane has arrived at Mulberry to stage the brand’s first runway show in nine years and Alexander McQueen, which has shown in Paris since 2001, is coming home the way football never could.

Perhaps the most significant addition to the line-up is Marks & Spencer, which saw what Calvin Klein was doing in the USA — resuming runway shows after a six-year hiatus — and decided it was time to put affordability on the catwalk. It’s no small feat: fashion shows are expensive, some reaching £10 million in production costs.

As audiences return to analogue (interest in film cameras and physical books is on the up), labels are finding it necessary to swap modernity for old-school tactics.

The 1990s, as so often, provide the blueprint: slip dresses and oversized blazers are among the top trends of the year. Appropriately, one of the cult films of the decade — the 1995 fashion documentary Unzipped, which takes viewers on a behind-the-scenes journey through designer Isaac Mizrahi’s Autumn/Winter 1994 collection — will return to American cinemas this month, sating growing demand among young fashionistas for whom the traditional runway format feels like more of a novelty.

Where a decade ago CHANEL might have launched a rocket during its show at Paris’s Grand Palais, today’s runway efforts are notably more pared back, placing the human at the heart of it all. ‘It transports me,’ singer-songwriter Charli XCX told Bella Freud on the designer’s Fashion Neurosis podcast, ‘to watch Naomi [Campbell] or Shalom [Harlow] stomping along to an epic song.’ The artist paid tribute to the catwalk in the video for SS26, a song from her new album Music, Fashion, Film, in which she struts down a runway before a fashion-week who’s who.

For all the industry’s flirtations with the cutting-edge, we seem more than ever in thrall to the traditions that first made it big.

Ever since my book Fashioning the Crown (Faber & Faber, £25) was published earlier this year, I have often been asked to identify my favourite of Elizabeth II’s superb outfits. Although I admire her majestic evening gowns and regal ceremonial robes, I particularly love the off-duty clothes she wore in Scotland. These have a quiet and timeless elegance, as well as being practical, and they remind me of the occasions when, as the wife of Prince Philip’s godson, I saw her on shoot days at Balmoral, wearing a tweed jacket, tartan skirt, woollen stockings and sturdy brown leather brogues.

It has sometimes been said that her heart was in the Highlands and she certainly looked at ease there, as well as beautifully dressed — even in the yellow Marigold gloves she donned to wash up after picnic lunches in a bothy.

After the Queen’s death in 2022, when I was researching my book, I was fortunate to be allowed to study many of her clothes in the archives at Windsor Castle, where they were being catalogued for the current exhibition at The King’s Gallery (‘Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style’).

Amid the magnificent examples of royal couture deployed as sartorial statecraft and dress diplomacy, I was drawn to an impeccably tailored ensemble from the late 1940s, before she came to the throne.

The Scottish tweed jacket was made by Norman Hartnell, who created her fairy-tale wedding gown in 1947 and would go on to design her spectacular coronation robes in 1953. Examining it closely, I could see it was cut along similar lines to Christian Dior’s famous Bar jacket from his debut New Look collection of 1947, with a defined waist, neat buttons and gently padded shoulders.

If a contemporary model were to appear in the same tweed jacket at a Paris fashion show next month, it would look as perfect as it did eight decades ago on the young Princess Elizabeth. Needless to say, it would be no less appropriate on a heather-clad Scottish hillside this season.

The Princess’s Hartnell jacket was paired with a Balmoral tartan skirt: the same distinctive fabric that had been created in 1853 for her great-great-grandparents, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the year after they had purchased the Deeside estate.

The tartan is relatively discreet, at least by Victorian standards — predominantly grey, with red and black overchecks — and said to be designed by Prince Albert, who was inspired by the rugged granite of the Aberdeenshire landscape.

It was, of course, Victoria and Albert who made this area so fashionable during her reign, drawing tourists and tartan-buyers to the Highlands. The royal couple’s highly romanticised version of Scottish style was writ large in Balmoral Castle itself, which was constructed as a vast neo-Gothic building in the mid 1850s and bedecked with an abundance of tartan upholstery and furnishings to match the swirling royal kilts.

This idealised 19th-century aesthetic, subsequently dubbed ‘Balmorality’ or ‘tartanry’ by its cultural critics, has been derided as inauthentic and sentimental. Yet the decorative Balmoral tartan — which can only be worn by members of the Royal Family and the Piper to the Sovereign — has aged wonderfully well, as is evident in The King’s Gallery exhibition, where visitors can admire the late Queen’s skirt.

Pleated, but with less fabric than a traditional kilt, it has the same ageless appeal as her Scottish tweed jacket and, for me at least, it is impossible to see without remembering the last public picture of Elizabeth II, taken only two days before her death.

Framed in the reassuring surroundings of the Balmoral drawing room on September 6, 2022, as she prepared to meet the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, the Queen was smiling and wearing her signature pearls, with a soft grey wool cardigan, silk blouse and familiar-looking tartan skirt.

Although clearly frail, she looked every inch our monarch, as she always did, but also a natural Scottish countrywoman, at home in her favourite place in the world.

This feature originally appeared in the August 19, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

When Marie-Caroline of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duchesse du Berry held a costume ball to mark the arrival of Mary Stuart of Scotland at the Tuileries in 1829, she insisted on a quadrille (a dance performed by four couples in a rectangular formation) that could only be done if one carried a fan.

It revived a fashion lost during the French Revolution and transformed Jean-Pierre Duvelleroy’s dream into an illustrious business.

The 25-year-old éventailliste (fan-maker) established his company in Paris in 1827 to produce hand fans from fine materials using artisanal techniques.

Designs were inspired by artists, the natural world and culture, painted onto paper or threaded with feathers. Mounts (the part held in the hand) were made with wood including birch, ebony and beech; mother-of-pearl, ivory, and galalith can be chosen today.

In 1843, Duvelleroy patented a mould that made it possible to cold-pleat delicate fabrics enabling silks, lace and tulle to be painted or embroidered, at the same time as preserving their lightness.

About 2,000 métiers, including gilders, plumassiers, mirror-makers, painters, embroiderers, goldsmiths and engravers were sourced by Duvelleroy (up to 20 artisans worked on each fan), earning his metaphorical reputation as an orchestra conductor.

Materials are still decorated and individually hand-pleated, fold by fold, on an identical model.

Queen Victoria was so taken by the collection shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851, which included a fan made especially for her, that she swiftly appointed Duvelleroy as supplier to the Queen, and the European courts followed.

The London boutique opened at No 167, Regent Street in 1861 and published a booklet explaining the coded messages of fan gestures, such as twirling in the left hand (‘we are watched’) and carrying in the left hand in front of the face (‘desirous of acquaintance’).

The company maintains young Jean-Pierre’s founding vision: to craft exquisite fans and return them to the hands of all.

Duvelleroy's couture fans, handmade in Paris, start from €950; Fashion fans, handmade in Spain, start from €67. Visit the website for more information.

This feature originally appeared in the August 12, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

‘He was an aquarius, I’m an aquarius.’ Perhaps Cordelia de Castellane’s tenure as the artistic director of Dior Maison and Baby Dior for more than 15 years was written in the stars?

‘When I arrived, I think I made a very clear and strong link with Mr Dior himself. I know how strange it is, but going through his life and what he had left behind…’ she pauses, before adding, in her thick French accent: ‘He was very superstitious, I’m very superstitious. He was loving flowers, I feel very well in my garden…’

Whether you believe in the power of this ‘imaginary conversation’ between Cordelia and Christian, or indeed the significance of the zodiac, there’s no questioning the reality of the artistic director's success.

As well as Dior, Cordelia also runs her own company, Studio Cordelia de Castellane, which provides bespoke interior decoration for hotels, restaurants and private houses. In her own words, she has ‘a lot going on’. She explains: ‘I don’t like to do only one thing, I get bored very easily.’

Dior is the perfect gig for Cordelia. ‘As a little girl, Dior was a fantasy, it was a dream. I have always been obsessed with fashion,’ she says. Style also runs in the family. Cordelia’s great-great-uncle was the neo-romantic architect Emilio Terry. Her uncle, Gilles Dufour, was Karl Lagerfeld's long-time right-hand man at CHANEL and her mother, Countess Atalanta de Castellane, is an interior designer.

‘I grew up really in the middle of fashion and art and everything. It’s something that’s been around me since I was a little girl, so for sure I have a very good excuse to do the work that I do.’

Cordelia was raised in the Swiss mountains. An only child, she spent a lot of time with her grandparents, and a lot more time with no one at all. ‘I’m not really a city girl,’ she says. ‘I was a unique child, I spent a lot of my time quite alone — which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong.’ Perhaps because of this she has always had a strong imagination, ‘because I had my own world within myself’.

She had work experience at CHANEL, courtesy of her uncle, and landed her first job there aged 15. This was followed by a 10- year stint at Emanuel Ungaro that was originally only supposed to last for a month. ‘I arrived a young girl and left a woman with two children, married,’ she says. Then Dior came calling. ‘I knew very young what I wanted to do, and I wanted to work for a big house, so from the beginning I knew my goal.’

Your aesthetic hero

I’m quite obsessed with [Lorenzo] Mongiardino. I think that if I have to name one person with that kind of taste who pulls me away it would be Mongiardino, for sure.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

I would say that Monet is the painter who has my heart, because the way he paints nature is really something that talks to me. It's nothing original, but it's completely the truth.

The last thing of note that you bought for yourself

Nineteenth-century vases painted with irises that I found in a flea market. They’re really divine.

A possession you would never sell

I don’t know, because I think the most valuable things I have are not of monetary value. I’m not materialistic. I will never sell my soul, that’s for sure. Not for anything.

Your favourite painting

Something by either Monet or Renoir. With the latter’s paintings, like Bal du moulin de la Galette, you look at the people and you can imagine the story of what they’re talking about and who’s in love with who. It’s something that I love to do. That and Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son, by Monet.

The music that you work to

I could say classical, but also I love Coldplay and English pop music. I love music but it depends on my mood, you know?

The last podcast you listened to

I listened to something with Monty Don on. It made me cry, actually. He had a tough few years as a younger man. I’m a huge, huge fan.

What you’d take with you to a desert island

My family and my mum. Oh, and my dogs — Bagheera and Mowgli. Maybe I would swap all of them for just my two dogs. Maybe…

The thing that gets you up in the morning

Life. I love life.

The person that would play you in a film of your life

Meryl Streep. I love her. She’s so successful, so brave, so talented, but with such simple, good values. And to be able to be that beautiful and stay at the top of your game without touching your face — if we are talking about authenticity, she’s an authentic woman. I don’t know if I could be as brave as her.

A hotel you could go back and back to

I love the hotels in Italy. Like Hotel Il Pellicano, for example.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten

I think it was something also in Italy. Probably pasta, because I’m obsessed with pasta. I’m always on a diet because I could eat all day. I love eating.

The items you collect

I am a huge collector of everything. Sylvanian Families — because I’m like a kid and I don’t want to grow up — books of flowers, erasers, frogs, vases, plates. I am quite an excessive collector of lots of things.

A book that you've found inspiring

I love Proust. He’s been next to my bed since I was a little girl. I also love the Paris of that time, which he writes about.

The best present you’ve ever received

My four children, for sure.

Visit Dior's website to shop Maison Dior and Baby Dior. For more information on Studio Cordelia de Castellane, click here.

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Farmers are being encouraged by British Wool to cash in on this year’s sheep clip by selling through the organisation, which is the UK’s last agricultural commodity board.

British Wool collects farmers’ wool to auction across the year and promotes it at home and abroad. It says that international interest in British wool is at its strongest for years, and it needs at least another 1,000 tons this shearing.

‘The price we can pay to farmers is at a 10-year high and it has increased 70% since last year,’ Gareth Jones of British Wool told Country Life. ‘However, our biggest challenge is volume. The national flock [the number of sheep] has been shrinking and there has been a trend for farmers to use their wool on farm as the price we could offer them didn’t cover the price of shearing. Now, however, there is strong demand and we want to encourage farmers to let us sell their wool for them again.’

Sheep numbers aren’t only falling in Britain, but globally, not least in New Zealand, another factor that has fuelled demand for British wool. A further element is the rise of shedding breeds — such as Dorpers, Easy Cares and Dorset and Wiltshire Horns — as the National Sheep Association estimates that there are at least 500,000 of these hair-coated sheep in the UK that produce no wool for the market.

Although some farmers were driven to burn fleeces during the years of rock-bottom prices, others became entrepreneurial and are unlikely to return to British Wool. Katy Allanby falls into this category. She keeps a small mixed flock near Pickering, North Yorkshire, selling the bulk of her wool privately to crafters by advertising online. ‘I get a better return,’ she explains.

Julie Robertson, who farms 160 ewes near Stonehaven, Aberdeen, produces about 500 kilograms of wool each year, getting the best spun at a local mill to sell and making more than she could hope to from British Wool. ‘[British Wool] is going to struggle to get people back on board,’ she believes. ‘The price for my best wool would now be about 97p a kilo, which is much better than it was. We used to get about 7p.’ However, now, she says, she ‘can sell a raw fleece, weighing about 3½ kilograms, to a spinner for about £10’.

Interest in wool as a ‘green’ alternative to petroleum-derived materials keeps increasing. It is used as housing insulation, packaging for parcels and in high-end upholstery. Small businesses such as Fliss Lewis’s Woolshred are using it in products for gardeners, with Lewis buying several tons of black Hebridean fleeces from British Wool over the past five years to clean up and sell as garden mulch, wool twine and garden felt. ‘Wool is good as a natural slug and snail deterrent, for keeping moisture in pots and as a weed suppressant,’ she says.

Wool bedding has also increased in popularity. Research from Bangor University earlier this year showed that wool outperforms feather, synthetic and down-filled bedding, being warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Bangor’s product design faculty is currently exploring the effectiveness of wool’s lanolin as an industrial lubricant.

‘The demand for wool keeps increasing — it is an incredibly versatile product,’ says Jones.

Country Life's top wool picks

Across the street from Zitomer — the iconic Upper East Side pharmacy where you might find Annabelle Dexter-Jones picking up a prescription — the entrance to LilyEve's Madison Avenue headquarters is easy to miss. A very modest door is all that signals you've arrived. Once inside, two flights of stairs lead to yet another simple door. Then you open it, and all of the modesty falls away.

Lily Clempson is standing at the entrance, dressed in a knit jumper with striking gold earrings, her hair pulled up into a ponytail. She steps back into the showroom, a large space with charcoal walls and floor-to-ceiling shelves, neatly stacked with colourful Hermès towels. At the back of the space there’s a large work desk for her and her colleague, and at the front, rails of sharply-tailored jackets that flank a blue sofa and purple tub chair. It seems fitting that Lily’s showroom would be entirely unexpected because her story is too.

Though Lily is originally from London, it was her studies that brought her to New York — a place she was familiar with because her family had a home on Long Island where she’d spend summers. Having graduated from Parsons Design in 2019, Lily could hardly get her foot in the door when the Pandemic suddenly struck. Like many people who were struggling to find work during that turbulent time, Lily moved out to her parents’ house in East Hampton and began busying herself with craft projects.

She discovered five, old Hermès beach towels, which her mother (the radio and television presenter, Emma Forbes) had inherited, and — to her father’s horror — began cutting them up and turning them into masks. ‘They're so graphically attractive!’ she says. ‘Obviously I knew the brand, but I didn't know what an Hermès beach towel retailed at. I just thought that these were towels they never used.’ In an effort to ease her father’s shock, and put the masks to good use, she began selling them on Instagram in order to raise money for the New York Food Bank.

You could say she was in the right place at the right time because the Hamptonites totally fell for the facemasks, and within a few months she’d raised $10,000 for the food bank. Beyond needing chic masks as protection, they loved the idea of a luxury item being upcycled. ‘We were still in that phase of upcycling being new,’ says Lily, who had gathered a whole rolodex of new clientele, as well as loads of new materials.

While driving around the Hamptons delivering facemasks she’d meet customers face-to-face who were curious about her creations. ‘Nine times out of 10 they would be like: I have an Hermès beach towel,’ she says. Many of them wanted their own custom pieces fashioned from their personal towel collection. ‘[They’d] be like: I have this towel, can you make me a hat or a jacket?’

Lily, who had initially wanted to study fashion, was thrilled to start creating custom pieces. She could do the designs with ease, but wasn’t as skilled at sewing. She asked around town and, of all places, got a recommendation for a tailor from her local fish store. They told her she had to meet Michel Cantin, a tailor who lived in Springs. ‘I just assumed Michel was a woman, because Michel sounds more like a woman's name,’ says Lily. When she pulled up at Michel’s house in Springs, she did not expect to find an older French-Canadian man waiting at the door. A very ‘chic’ one, she adds. Lily joined him on his porch as he told her all about his storied career: how he once worked for a designer who sold at Bergdorf Goodman and had owned a womenswear store in East Hampton for 45 years, which he shared with his partner. ‘I just loved him immediately,’ says Lily.

They were an unlikely pair. She, a young, British-born designer with whacky ideas, and he, a 93-year-old French Canadian tailor, who has more traditional taste. But Lily saw more than just chemistry between them — she had been looking for someone she could learn from too. 'I never got that mentorship [from] someone who's had [so] much experience [and] knows a whole different side of the industry,’ she says. ‘[He] was so willing to talk me through things.’ They also challenge each other, often bickering or disagreeing, but always ultimately align.

The duo's endearing relationship spanned six years before Cantin sadly died a few months ago. Together, they expanded LilyEve's range, offering beach bags and hats made from towels as well as sharp jackets and trench coats. Standing in her slick showroom, surrounded by all their creations, neatly hanging on the rails, Lily is still slightly surprised she now has a physical space and a steady stream of clientele. Everything happened so quickly and organically that at times it all feels a bit like a dream.

Cantin used to mostly work from his house in Springs, focusing on their ‘blanket series’ — jackets made from merino wool and cashmere fabrics. Lily is often in the studio, taking appointments with clients and working on designs. Other times, she’s sourcing materials — connecting with people who have collections or reseller sites. On weekends she used to go to the Hamptons to see Cantin. She is open to new designs — as was Cantin — but the through-line is working with the Hermès brand. Not only because Lily adores the bright, graphic patterns, but because the quality is so superior. ‘They’re blankets, but we want them to feel like a jacket,’ she says.

The quality is of course part of the attraction. Most of her clients — a large percentage who are American women, from Florida, Texas and New York — know the Hermès brand and like that Clempson is reimagining it. With most luxury brands now readily available in every corner of the globe, it does tend to breed a kind of same-ness, which nobody wants when you’re dropping thousands of dollars on a piece. ‘I've always felt [that] if you're spending that amount on a garment, the last thing you want is to be walking down Madison Avenue and see five other people wearing it,’ she says. ‘Our aim is to keep it unique to the customer — offer them that experience.’ As the showroom is by-appointment only, Lily and her team (her mum works with her too) can also offer clients a one-on-one experience where they can try different items on at leisure and perhaps have something altered or custom-made.

So far, Lily has not worked with Hermès directly. ‘I'm obviously a huge fan of the brand,’ she says. ‘I’ve dabbled with other designers [but] it just didn't have the same appeal and quality.’ She works carefully with unspoken guidelines — first, authenticating the pieces, never showing the logo and ensuring she honours the fabric through the design, elevating the silk and wool scarves in imaginative ways. ‘I try to remain as respectful as possible to the brand,’ she says.

While she enjoys upcycling materials and inventing one-of-kind designs, she wouldn’t ever rule out a collaboration with Hermès if they came knocking on the door. ‘Maybe that’s in the future!’ she says with a hopeful smile.

From masks in East Hampton to a showroom on Madison Avenue, Lily has already proven she doesn't need Hermès to come knocking. But, she says, it would be nice.

‘These are objects that are not meant to be displayed as accessories… It’s human heritage. It’s world heritage…’ This is what Professor Sussan Babaie, Iranian historian and Courtauld institute professor made of the 3,000 year old earrings worn by Zendaya at the premiere of Christopher Nolan’s latest epic, The Odyssey.

The backlash to this particular fashion choice was immediate and widespread, not least because the earrings are made from ‘looted’ antiquities and worn to promote a film made in part on occupied land. Historians were concerned though, not simply that the cultural significance of the earrings was ‘flattened and hijacked’ by the celebrity wearing them, but that they are not pieces of jewellery to be worn, that they are in fact pieces of art to be preserved and admired from the safety of a museum or gallery cabinet.

I find this to be a fascinating dichotomy. That fashion, an ancient and universal art form, is inherently about self-expression, about conversing with others in an ‘instant language, as Miuccia Prada put it, and yet at a certain point items are removed from circulation. Pieces no longer adorn human bodies as intended. They cease to be chosen by a person looking to say something about themselves or politics or society and instead they stop still, become trapped in a case, frozen in the time at which they are preserved.

At what point does a piece of jewellery or item of clothing become too precious to wear? Is it when it is 200 years old? 500? When it is worn by someone culturally significant? How does one decide? And who gets to decide?

When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress on the red carpet there was huge backlash for fear she had caused damage (denied by the owners, Ripleys, who purchased it for $4.8 million) and that pieces so precious and important should be protected for their cultural significance. It could be argued that Kim Kardashian wearing the dress only serves to make it more culturally significant. That as a piece of art that dress was witnessed and marvelled at by an entirely new generation. Cultural significance is not determined by taste or nostalgia. Kim Kardashian is culturally significant whether one likes it or not.

The Iranian earrings that Zendaya wore belong to a private Mayfair gallery. Those earrings, like so many pieces of art, are available only to those with the money, contacts and unique opportunity to witness them. In Zendaya’s ears they were witnessed by millions. It is impossible, in this particular instance, to ignore the fact that they are stolen goods. However, the fact is, there is no plan to return them to Iran, whether they are sitting in a gallery or worn — culturally appropriately or not — in someone’s ears.

Obviously, I do not think that in every case ancient objects that were once worn should be out on the red carpet. If a piece of jewellery or item of clothing needs particular treatment in order to be preserved of course it should remain in a place where it is safe. I am not advocating for the Mona Lisa to be loaned out and displayed in someone’s kitchen for a week. But I am of the mind that pieces created as fashion — to be worn and moved in — are living objects, designed to be in motion. It is heartbreaking to think of them trapped and lifeless, viewed only by the few with elite access to them.

With vintage and antique items becoming more and more desirable in the luxury fashion world there must be a way to protect pieces, but also give them contemporary purpose, to utilise them and bring them back to life. It seems like a wasted opportunity that pieces with so much history, so many stories to tell, may sit hidden in a cabinet rather than being worn and admired in full view of the world.

The 2026 Met Gala dress code was 'Fashion is Art' — but is it? Click here to find out what our contributor Susanne Madsen thinks.

'Time is a lot of the things people say that God is.’ Thus begins Outlander, the first book in the best-selling fantasy series by American author Diana Gabaldon.

Time is to an extent the protagonist of her story — a historical novel with romance and time-travel elements — but also a reason for the book’s changing fortunes.

When she first wrote it in the 1980s, publishers hesitated because they didn’t know how to categorise it: was it a romance? Fantasy? Historical fiction? Fast-forward several decades and genre-straddling books have almost become a genre of their own, Outlander is an immense success and has spawned an equally popular television series, starring Caitríona Balfe and Sam Heughan as the protagonists, 20th-century nurse Clare Fraser and her husband, 18th-century laird Jamie.

With the final season airing now, Bonhams in London is offering a selection of costumes and props on August 5. Among the highlights are the costume worn by Heughan in the Battle of Culloden scenes (estimate £1,500–£2,000) and the red ball gown created for Balfe (£3,000–£5,000). A special exhibition of the lots runs until August 4.

Bonhams previously oversaw the sale of replica royal costumes, coronation robes, furniture, props and set pieces from The Crown (2016-2024). The 2024 auction had a total estimate of around £525,000, but went on to make more than £1.67 million. The house described the sale as a major success, helped by huge international interest and more than 30,000 exhibition visitors before the auction.

In 2023, Kerry Taylor Auctions sold Colin Firth's famous wet shirt from Pride and Prejudice (1995) for £20,000, roughly double its estimate. As well as film and TV costumes, Kerry Taylor specialises in vintage and contemporary fashion, fine antique dress and European, Asian and Islamic textiles.

The house negotiated the private treaty sale of the wedding suit of James II to the V&A Museum and organised the sale of most important private collection of Audrey Hepburn's haute couture dresses and accessories to ever come to market. It included a black lace ensemble which was worn by the star in the film How to Steal a Million (1966). The Givenchy masterpiece sold for £55,000.

In 1947, Princess Elizabeth embarked on her Hampshire honeymoon with a trio of companions: her new husband, Susan the corgi and a selection of brown suitcases she continued to use, personalised later with a monogram reading ‘THE QUEEN’.

The cases were from Globe-Trotter, established by David Nelken in 1897 to provide luggage built to last.

It was the adoption of vulcanised fibreboard that earned the suitcases an early reputation. A remarkably strong yet lightweight material, it was invented in 1859 and is made by bonding paper, cotton and wood pulp, then compressing them into sheets (the exact formula, patented by Globe-Trotter in 1902, is a closely guarded secret).

A single sheet of fibreboard is used per case, hand-moulded and still shaped on Victorian-era machinery in a process that takes 10 days.

How did the company demonstrate its strength? By standing an elephant on a cabin trunk and using the image for the 1912–13 catalogue, of course.

Today, the leather used for the distinctive corners and straps are supplied exclusively by British tanneries and no more than 200 suitcases are crafted in the Hertfordshire factory each week.

The are several Globe-Trotter fans in the Country Life team — fitting given that the luggage brand and magazine were founded in the same year. 'I have been to the factory where they're [the cases] made and it is extraordinary,' says Editor-in-Chief Mark Hedges. 'There are these wonderful old bits of machinery that are still used, alongside more modern ones. One of the most fascinating things was them repairing very old cases.'

Country Life contributor Christopher Wallace has spent the last two years travelling the world, living out of his Globe-Trotter case: 'I've actually just put it to rest. I kept it going for as long as I could and I've never had more compliments on anything in my life. It's been dinged by elephants, it's fallen off safari trucks, it's traversed five continents: Africa top to bottom; South America; China east to west. It was part of my life, and I was very sad to let it go.'

'People become emotionally attached to a suitcase,' says Mark, 'because they've been away or on holiday with it — it's been with them in all of their happier moments.'

Elephants were not the only test. In 1912, Captain Robert Falcon Scott packed a Globe-Trotter case for his Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic and Sir Winston Churchill faced Whitehall as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924 with a Dispatch Case in hand. 'When I was there [in the factory],' says Mark, 'they were repairing Brad Pitt's set of cases — at least I'm 95% sure it was Brad Pitts'...'

This unparalleled rolodex of customers is one of the reasons Christopher wanted a Globe-Trotter in the first place. 'I wanted mine to have a little bit of the Golden Age of travel and some of the Poirot elements in it. I wanted the suitcase I saw as a kid in the old ads for Cunard. The kind of luggage you'd put a sticker on from the Carlton in Cannes.'

In 1900, the company introduced navy-blue luggage — a radical departure from the ubiquitous brown of the era. Last year, they marked the 60th anniversary of the 1965 James Bond film Thunderball with a limited-edition Globe-Trotter x 007 bag. Only 60 were made available, in navy with leather trim with internal artwork by the late Robert McGinnis, the brains behind many of the franchise's famous posters.

Today, more than 30 colour options are available, including a candy pink that's part of an ongoing and successful collaboration with Snoopy, Woodstock and the PEANUTS gang.

Cases from £1,195. Visit the Globe-Trotter website to view the whole range.

This feature originally appeared in the July 8, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Sarah Corbett-Winder (below) is a fashion consultant, sometimes referred to as ‘The Wardrobe Whisperer’, and founder of Kipper clothing.

She recently moved from London to a historic farmhouse in the Welsh countryside, where she lives with her husband, three children and two miniature sausage dogs.

Gucci mega cuff coat

Obviously a piece from my wardrobe had to feature. It has been very hard to pick (I wanted to say the whole lot), but it would have to be this.

She is a recent friend I picked up from Sign of the Times — so good for vintage finds.

I had no intention of buying, but she fit me like a glove and made me smile so much that she had to come home with me.

I like to wear her in expected and unexpected situations, such as the Monday-morning school drop off or in the supermarket.

Not only does she bring me joy, but also others, and I hope to pass her onto my girls.

Engraved necklace

The day before our wedding day, my husband gave me a necklace. A penny-sized, very classic gold disc on a thin gold chain with ‘N&S 14.12.13’ — our initials and wedding date — engraved on it. I haven’t taken it off since that day.

I cherish it with all my heart and hold it when I need that extra boost or support in my life. A piece that is totally and truly tailored to my husband and I.

Portrait of a Lady EDP by Frédéric Malle

It has become a bit of an inside joke that you can usually smell me before you see me.

I have been wearing this for about seven years now and I am still in love with it. It’s such an unusual, slightly masculine, yet very feminine smell.

I am yet to smell another perfume that gets me like this one. It’s a mixture of rose, patchouli and sandalwood — a real piece of art.

It also comes as a body lotion, which might be my next luxury…

Margaret and Marigold

My two wonderful pooches. Margaret is four years old, my short-haired dappled friend, and Marigold is nine months old, my long-haired dappled friend.

They bring me so much joy and insist on being next to me or with me at all times, like my own private security. There is sometimes a competition to see who can be closer to me… Margaret always wins.

They make me feel so loved and special. A lot of my day is spent admiring my pooches, particularly when they are wearing one of their silk neck scarves (nearly always — they have a rather extensive collection!).

This feature originally appeared in the April 29, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

When Marlon Brando donned a white T-shirt in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), he transformed the conventional underwear (a vest) into casual outerwear. The real hero of this shift, however, was Thomas Hill, who had founded the company that became Sunspel almost a century before.

At his factory in Nottingham, he produced undergarments using the world’s finest materials, and adapted a traditional lace-making machine to create a lightweight, durable cotton that felt luxurious on the skin, using it to make short-sleeved undershirts. The new garment proved popular among manual workers who had resorted to cutting their long-johns into separates to keep them cool.

Today, 10 craftspeople and 12 production stages make the Sunspel Classic T-shirt. Extra-long staple Supima cotton sourced from a single farm in California, USA, is double-twisted and knitted into a specialised, open-knit jersey based on the original structure developed by Hill, before being cut and assembled by hand in the Long Eaton factory in Derbyshire where the company has operated since 1937.

Supple, with a silk-like softness, carefully balanced proportions allow it to sit close to the body yet retain its shape, whether tucked in or worn loose. The softly structured crew neck and neat-cut sleeve are universally flattering and versatile. ‘With its roots in underwear, the Classic T-shirt is designed to feel almost invisible,’ says Sunspel CEO Nick Brooke. Every garment carries the name of the artisan responsible for the final inspection. On its own or tucked beneath a suit, underwear as outerwear looks as good as it feels.

Sunspel's Classic T-shirts are available in 44 colours for £95.

Sunspel also manufacture T-shirts using rare Sea Island cotton. For more information, click here.

This feature originally appeared in the June 10, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe

Neckties, cowboy boots, layers, oversize men’s jackets and a hat always perched jauntily on her head: Diane Keaton had a sense of style that was as unerring as it was eclectic and unambiguously personal and intentional.

She even moulded the wardrobe of Annie Hall — the struggling nightclub singer in a failing relationship with Woody Allen’s neurotic comedian Alvy Singer in the eponymous film, a role that would land her an Oscar — on her own. ‘I wanted the clothes to make the woman,’ she said, paraphrasing the motto of her hero Cary Grant.

‘Diane has always marched to the beat of her own drum, in the way she dresses and the way she lives,’ wrote Ralph Lauren in the foreword of Fashion First, the book that chronicled the actress’s looks over the decades.

‘Whether she's on stage accepting an award or on a sidewalk walking her dog with her kids, she's always herself. Her style is not defined by the moment. It's not about trends. It's authentic and forever.’

This same, exactingly curated approach she extended to collecting — American art, photography, objets — and decorating. Now, some of the greatest pieces she surrounded herself with will go under the hammer at Bonhams in four June sales.

The centrepiece of the series is ‘The Diane Keaton Collection: Architecture of an Icon’, held in New York on June 8, in which the outfits and objects that most defined her will be on offer — not least the Ralph Lauren houndstooth suit and overcoat she wore at the 2020 Oscars, which she also sported on the cover of Fashion First (estimated at $2,000–$3,000).

Other highlights include a Ralph Lauren polka dot tie ($100–$200) and a black bowler hat ($400–$600), which was such a recurring feature of her look, as well as the original script for Annie Hall ($2,000–$3,000) and artwork she made, such as Pair of Collages ($600–$800), or collected, including several paintings reflecting her long-standing fascination for the American West.

The other sales in the series, which run online, also feature fashion, interiors and objects that inspired her or encapsulated her career. Estimated at $300–$500, the polka‑dot skirt and belt she wore as Leah, the lonely neighbour of Michael Douglas’s Oren Little, who gets roped into looking after his granddaughter in And So It Goes, is one of the lots in ‘The Diane Keaton Collection: Tailored & Timeless’, a selection of more than 200 pieces of clothing, jewellery, hats and accessories that shaped her distinctive style (May 31–June 9).

Industrial furniture, California Hillside pottery and Native American pictorial weavings all feature in the second sale, ‘The Diane Keaton Collection: At Home with Diane’ (June 1–10). The third, ‘The Diane Keaton Collection: Chapters of an Edited Life’, will showcase the mixed-media collages and photographs she made, a selection of books from her library and memorabilia from her acting life, including scripts and letters she exchanged with other performers and directors (June 1–11).

A selection of pieces will be on show in Los Angeles (from May 5) and New York (from May 29) ahead of the sales.

The trouble with the British summer is you have to be prepared to dress for all eventualities. First, there's the weather: yes, it might be sunny, hot enough, in fact, to cause sunburn, but it might also rain or be unseasonably chilly. There might be hail, or a thunderstorm. If you're lucky, you might experience four of these in the space of four hours.

Second, there are the events: weddings, park picnics, Royal Ascot, Glorious Goodwood, Henley Festival — all of which require a different outfit that will survive the whole day. There aren't many things that will still look good by the time the last race as Ascot gallops around and you're staggering to catch the 6.32pm train to Clapham Junction (poor you) or a taxi (preferable). Or a helicopter (if you're really showing off). A helicopter, incidentally, makes your outfit choice much easier, because it’s quite hard to stagger up that hill from Ascot train station towards Carpark Number 1 in teetering heels, but less of a problem if you’re choppering in.

Stylist Sarah Kate Byrne says the trick to summer dressing is to reach for something timeless and elegant over anything too fashionable. The brands she suggests turning to include Isabel Manns, Claire Mischevani (a racecourse classic) and Beulah.

Lavinia Brennan, co-founder of the latter, says the palette this season is soft and romantic: ‘Sugar pinks, buttery yellows and icy blues.’ Beulah has just released a summer collaboration with Ginnie Chadwyck-Healey, which includes a very pretty white and blue linen skirt and shirt co-ord set, and a silk crepe de chine polka-dot dress with ruffled sleeves. Remember, natural fabrics are your friend; no nasty polyester which may whiff in the armpit after a long day in the Champagne tent.

If you’re looking for further inspiration, it’s worth having a gander at Ginnie’s website, The Fairground. It’s a curated site of independent brands and I generally want everything I see on there. So much more interesting than sifting through the Zara app, and it greatly reduces the risk of showing up at an event in the same dress as someone else. I once went to a wedding where eight women were in Rixo.

Despite my reservations over Zara and polyester, I do own a couple of Zara suits, both of which have done valiant work in the past few years. Obviously, we’re not supposed to be buying from fast fashion brands these days — buy less, buy better and all that — but suits, whether from Zara, The Fold or Knatchbull, are a girl's best friend. At a recent wedding, I wore a fuchsia suit with a silk slip underneath and when the temperature started to climb I was able to take my jacket off as the chaps began removing their morning coats.

I’m also a fan of renting an outfit because I can wear a posh frock that might have otherwise cost me hundreds and hundreds of pounds and give the impression that I'm a sort of high-roller.

Loan the Look is my favourite rental site because they have a Notting Hill studio you can pop into beforehand to check that said frock fits. Success stories include dresses from Emilia Wickstead and De La Vali.

Shoes. Often a nightmare when it comes to summer dressing because you need to be on your feet all day and battle with different terrains. Some insist on wearing wedges; others insist that wearing them borders on a hate crime. Recently, I went to a wedding in flat shoes. Revolutionary. You’re allowed to, these days, you know. I love the flat Penelope Chilvers espadrilles. And, whisper it, but have you had a look at the brand Sole Bliss? Their shoes are designed to be wildly comfortable, with three layers of memory foam and greater arch support, and I appreciate that that sounds a bit orthopaedic, but The Queen, Cate Blanchett, Julia Roberts and Olivia Colman wear them. I assume you don't require further endorsement?

P.s always pack an umbrella — even if the sun is blazing and there's not a cloud in the sky.

Were florals for spring ever groundbreaking? Unlikely, for the natural world has appeared on clothing since Ancient Greeks stitched flower motifs into their trims. Thereafter, designers have leant on specific flowers (Lee Alexander McQueen was patron of the rose), paid homage to gardens (see the ‘tangled flowers’ of Highgrove’s Kitchen Garden at Burberry) and cite them as places where creativity blossoms (Simone Rocha names Forde Abbey and Charleston among her favourites). It is no surprise: every season offers new shapes, new curiosities, and enough colour to stock a palette for decades.

Before Burberry and Rocha, there were maidens and medieval knights — the former hand-embroidering and the latter sporting decorated coats and armour to reflect rank and virtue. Patterned silks travelled from China from the 12th century, and sumptuous Italian velvets with luscious florals and fruits threaded with gold and silver later. However, what interested British makers most was not the pattern, but the techniques, and once mastered, they distinguished their craft with a commitment to botanical realism and flora closer to home.

Roses and hedgerow flowers such as Lonicera periclymenum (honeysuckle), Hedera helix (ivy) and Borago officinalis (borage) adorned the garments of Elizabeth I, mirrored among her noblemen. When travel and trade increased, foreign verdure, such as Tulipa from Turkey or Tagetes erecta (marigolds) from Africa were peppered among them, but the most popular were those recognisable by everyman. The sentiment endured, visible in the flourishing popularity of William Morris’s prints taken directly from his garden: ‘Trellis’, his first, from those at Red House in Kent, and ‘Strawberry Thief’, from the thrushes stealing strawberries at Kelmscott Manor. Even his Italian brocade-inspired ‘Wandle’ substituted stylised crowns for chrysanthemums.

A budding interest in botanicals influenced fashion. When printed herbals arrived in the late 16th century, their content was translated into gardens and onto garments. The sign of a refined Englishwoman was expertise in both. She knew how to tend and use botanicals for her household, and could embroider well. When her craft portrayed accurate depictions, they indicated her knowledge and abilities. Fast-forward to the 20th century, the study of seed catalogues influenced a young Christian Dior so much that, in 1952, he named two couture dresses ‘Vilmorin’ and ‘Andrieux’, titles of French seed producers.

The most successful designers of Georgian Britain, such as Anna Maria Garthwaite, were members of elite botanical societies, granting them access to new cultivars. They formed close relationships with nurserymen, which became quid-pro-quo when the English Landscape Movement ‘banished’ many species from their naturalistic gardens. ‘A rare anemone was then as likely to be sold for the loom or needle as for horticultural display,’ wrote Nicola Shulman, guest-curator of The Garden Museum’s ‘Fashion & Gardens’ exhibition in 2014. In the V&A Museum is a folding fan, dated 1792, illustrated with botanical drawings on the front, and descriptions with other examples that fall into each class on the reverse. It also features lines from Erasmus Darwin’s poem The Botanick Garden (1791).

For Christopher Kane, it was memories of science classes dissecting buttercups and carnations that inspired his Spring/Summer 2014 collection. Skirts were embroidered with botanical diagrams and silky dresses pinned with metal crocodile clips. In case you missed it, he was announced as creative director of Mulberry earlier this year.

Victorians preferred symbolism over science. Floriography was hugely popular and plants became a visual expression of sentiment that social etiquette forbade (a Victorian equivalent of the emoji, one might say). Robinia hispida (pink acacia) indicated elegance; clematis mental beauty (though evergreen clematis inferred poverty); Primula veris (cowslip) winning grace; and orange blossoms purity, particularly popular after Queen Victoria wore them for her wedding in 1840. A book published in 1861 lists Rubus fruticosus (brambles) as lowliness — surely changed by the charm of Morris’s English garden prints, which soon made the exotic blooms look outdated.

What’s luck got to do with it? Plenty, if you are Dior. The Convallaria majalis (lily-of-the-valley), given as a token of luck in France since the 16th century, is a defining figure of the maison. Not only a recurring theme in collections, the designer would tuck fronds into the hems of his models before a show and wore one at all times himself. It continues to bloom among fashion, fragrance, accessories and homeware, paying homage to the flower and the man.

While gardens influenced prints, there are examples of it working in reverse. In the late 16th century, Claude Mollet, premier jardinier du Roy, introduced parterre de broderie, an intricate formal garden style characterised by scroll-like patterns. They were designed to emulate the embroidery edging fine clothes, so when the kings stepped up to their windows, they saw their cuffs mirrored in the landscape and the punctilio of their court carried beyond their palace doors. ‘The intention was to show how nature… could be subdued to a detail on the most domestic and regulated of arts’, Shulman notes. They were also a game of illusion, as rather than being planted with blooms, the ‘flowers’ were ladies of the court walking the pathways, complete with jewelled insects in their hair.

In a similar (though less sinister) way, Dior envisioned his women as flowers, fusing their nature and form. His New Look collection drew directly on floral, not female, figures. Titled Corolle (the ring of petals on a flower), his subjects merged in silhouettes of soft shoulders, nipped waists and blooming skirts. A former Dior employee remarked: ‘The flower woman was born’.

Simone Rocha is inspired by the journey from bud to decay, expressed in a balance of delicate and deconstructed. At present, you’ll find hems shaped like petals, larger-than-life sculpted roses and flowers between layers of tulle referencing their unexpected appearance in rugged landscapes. She echoes McQueen, the fashion rosarian, who saw them as a representation of duality: beauty and life, death and decay. His 2006 Sarabande collection included dresses covered with faux and fresh flowers. Those on the finale look began dropping off as the model walked — an accidental effect, but a moment of serendipitous beauty.

Despite mass-production, florals spurred a respect for craftsmanship. Early textiles required skilled weavers and fine embroidery dextrous hands. Both were time-consuming and costly: a hand-embroidered dress in the 16th century could cost as much as a good-sized house. The Arts-and-Crafts movement of the late 19th century saw lace and home-embroidery flourish (Morris sold ‘work it yourself’ kits), and Liberty’s emphasis on hand-drawn and hand-printed was revered.

Artificial flower-making also thrived. The process involved cutting, pressing and imprinting fabric by hand, then assembling later. In 1891, there were 4,011 flower-makers in London alone. Demand would rocket as the Season began, and black flowers — for which there were designated makers — became a national speciality, feeding the Victorian cult of mourning dress. Today, Paris boasts two of the oldest flower ateliers: Maison Legeron, formerly Guth, established in 1727, and Lemarié, established in 1880 and part of Chanel’s Métiers d’Art since 1996.

When speaking of Chanel, one cannot ignore camellias. It has appeared on the house's haute couture, ready-to-wear and jewellery collections and, most recently, in the form of wild-looking brooches on cardigans. For her, it was a symbol of elegance and simplicity, odourless (so it didn’t compromise Chanel No.5) and entwined in her love affair with Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel. We await Matthieu Blazy’s interpretations with anticipation.

Flowers are synonymous with beauty. When a young Elsa Schiaparelli believed herself to be ugly, she planted seeds inside her nose and ears so they would turn her into a beautiful bouquet. It didn’t work, but wearing them is far more fun anyway.

'The King hath yesterday in council declared his resolution of setting a fashion for clothes which he will never alter. It will be a vest… and will do good,’ recorded Samuel Pepys in October 1666.

Thus the waistcoat became the very heart of Britain’s long tradition of formalwear — a legacy Favourbrook continues 360 years later.

It was the seconds rolls at Stephen Walters’s silk mill in Sudbury that inspired Oliver Spencer to create his first waistcoats from ecclesiastical cloth — a fitting source, given that a theory behind the garment’s name (spelling notwithstanding) is that it was once made with offcuts.

He sold them at Portobello Market in the 1980s and later established Favourbrook on Jermyn Street, London, in 1990, aiming to inject a sense of fun into formalwear. A starring role in Four Weddings and a Funeral propelled the brand from niche concern to international fame.

The waistcoats are produced in London using British-woven silks, gabardines from the north of England and Northern Irish linens, chosen for quality and to support traditional textile skills.

Single- and double-breasted styles have been refined so each sits close to the torso without restricting movement and the elliptical sweep of double-breasted variations harmonises with a suit's lapels.

Colours range from sunshine yellow to muted grey, and the elaborately embroidered pieces are produced in northern France.

‘The waistcoat offers men an easy, approachable way to introduce colour and personality to their wardrobes,’ says Oliver. Charles II would have regally approved.

Waistcoats from £160. Visit the Favourbrook website for more information and to purchase.

This feature originally appeared in the May 13, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

'The best bit of advice I was ever given for dressing at Chelsea,’ garden designer James Alexander-Sinclair reveals, ‘is to wear sensible shoes. Thankfully, I am not a slingback kind of guy.’

The perennial question for those planning a visit to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is what to wear. Practicality is a priority — weather conditions and walking around 11 acres of showground demand it — but it needn’t come at the expense of dressing up, which is part of the show’s charm.

For men, a shirt with a lightweight wool blend or linen suit looks smart and is appropriate for the spectrum of weather conditions. Neutral tones are refreshing and classic blues can be enlivened by a bolt of colour in your tie or pocket square (Alan Titchmarsh, above, chose bubblegum pink for his last year). Avoid a new-shoe debut; instead, a soft loafer or suede boot will keep you fit on your feet.

Ladies keen for a change from the florals can try stripes or tropical motifs (Alémais is good for both). A single colour head to toe looks particularly striking against the hustle and bustle of plants and people. Shirt dresses and heavier linen styles are smart and summery, yet offer welcome warmth should the sun dip. A cardigan is indispensable, even if it spends the day around your shoulders, or take a cue from Isabelle de la Bruyère and accessorise with a gracefully draped shawl.

Comfortable shoes don’t have to be staid. A pointed or almond-toe flat is elegant; a wedge style is sustainable for walking; and if, unlike James, you can’t resist a slingback, choose one with a chunkier heel. Even a little extra height can work miracles.

Pack a small umbrella (‘they’re expensive to buy at the show,’ warns Editor-in-Chief Mark Hedges). A handkerchief is wise if hayfever is a concern with the plane trees in full force. Glasses — sun and reading — are not to be forgotten and a notebook is useful (Smythson’s Chelsea design is a fitting choice).

The most important accessory? A smile — it is a blooming marvellous occasion after all.

The Country Life ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, designed by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture, is at stand PW215 at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 18–23.

To celebrate, you can buy a year-long subscription for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price. International offers also available. Until May 31.

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.

Here’s a scenario: a wedding invitation lands and the dress code says ‘hats very much encouraged’. Do you a) wear a hat? B) ignore it and go without?

These days, the latter is extremely common. I have been to weddings where the invitation stipulated as much, and the only people who’ve dutifully obeyed are the mother-of-the-bride and an elderly aunt.

I get it. Hats are expensive. Another item to think about on top of the frock and the shoes and the bag and the wedding present and the bed and breakfast. You may also feel self-conscious in a hat. How big do you go? Too big and you risk annoying everyone in church; too small and you’re veering dangerously into fascinator territory. I suspect this partly accounts for the recent rise in ‘fun’ Alice bands. A nod to a hat, you have something on your head, but you haven’t gone for the full caboodle. You can also greet people hello without garrotting them with your hat brim.

But come on, everyone, where’s your sense of occasion? Buck up. You spend much of your life in athleisure. Is it going to kill you to wear something fancy on your head for an afternoon? Of course, if you’re in the Royal Enclosure at Royal Ascot, men have to wear top hats and women something ‘with a minimum base diameter of 10cm’ (which essentially means no fascinators, please), although this year’s Ascot stylebook also featured a woman wearing a top hat, if that’s more your bag. But if you receive a wedding invitation encouraging a hat, why not?

Alice Hare, stylist and woman who knows what’s what when it comes to etiquette and matters of dress, doesn’t mince her words. ‘Do not be afraid of a f**k-off hat. Their scarcity now makes them all the more elegant. See: Andie MacDowell's chicer than chic black wedding guest hat in Four Weddings and a Funeral. There's a reason she gets chatted up by everyone at that wedding and the hat is key to that.’ A hat, in other words, can add allure, elegance, may give you an air of sophistication above those who’ve plumped for Alice bands, which smack slightly of school imho.

They don’t have to be expensive, either. If you can afford a Philip Treacy or Stephen Jones, splendid. Laura Cathcart makes sensationally pretty hats if you can stretch to the £500 mark. But, points out Alice, ‘couture milliner Lisa Tan has just collaborated with Coast on a range of hats around £100, while Edwina Ibbotson just did a collab with River Island.’ The latter includes a particularly jolly polka-dot boater for £59, and boaters aren’t a bad option if you’re nervous about hats. Soignée, but not too ostentatious. Or, adds Alice, take an old hat to VV Rouleaux in Marylebone and they will update it with trimmings to match your outfit.

As for wearing them, well, ‘if the hat has an elastic band to secure it to the head (most do), cover that with your hair or make sure the band is the same colour as your hair at least, and secure it with hair grips so it doesn't fly off in the wind.’ In the olden days, the general rule was that the hat would be in place for the ceremony, and then stay on until the mother-of-the-bride removed hers, likely just before sitting down to eat. By and large, that still stands today. You can keep it on for the reception (you want to get your money’s worth, right?), but whip it off for supper. If hats have been encouraged, there should be somewhere in the marquee to hang or peg said hat. Just remember to collect it at the end of the evening, before staggering off to your taxi.

This interview is a series — in which eight personalities from the art world share their dream time-travel destinations — that originally appeared as a whole in the April 22, 2026 issue of the magazine.

You can see sculptor Hamish Mackie's responses, here.

Who? Lyndsey Mendick

What? Artist

Where would you go if you could time travel?

Oh, I’d go and be one of Anne Boleyn’s ladies-in-waiting. I’m always desperate to know how cold it was in those big houses or how disgusting people smelled.

I’d want to see people’s teeth. Also, their banquets. I’d eat a lot of game and hogs and probably die really early of gout.

What’s the one thing you would want to see?

I think [1960s to 1980s] New York and [Andy] Warhol’s The Factory and that whole incredible time and era. The Chelsea hotel. Greenwich village. But, if I’m being honest, I don’t think they’d let me in anywhere and it probably would be deeply disappointing.

Who is the one artist you would want to meet?

I think Frida Kahlo (1907–54). Or perhaps Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010). Can I say both? They have both been big inspirations for me from the age of about 14, when I first really started getting into art. It would be amazing just to sit and listen to them.

What would you bring back if you could?

I’d save Dame Tracey Emin’s Everyone I ever slept with 1963–1995 [also known as The Tent] from the 2004 Momart fire.

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A few weeks ago, I watched my husband pick out a stylish t-shirt from a store clothing rack, hold it up to his body and then, with a degree of reluctant acceptance, look for the price tag.

His eyes bulged, Bugs Bunny style; ‘how on Earth could this t-shirt cost that much?’ Alas, dear husband, this wasn’t just any old mass-produced cotton t-shirt. This was a t-shirt made from Sea Island cotton, one of the rarest fabrics in the world. Still, is it worthy of its £245 price tag? Surely, when I tell you where the cotton comes from and what goes into producing it, you’ll agree with me that the price is rather, well, reasonable.

The world’s rarest fabrics all begin life far from the fashion capitals in which they are ultimately worn: high up in the Andes, in lotus-filled waterways, and across the vast Mongolian steppe. They are things such as featherlight vicuña and durable Scottish wool, prized as much for their heritage — the centuries of use — as for their rarity and beauty. You see, when it comes to fabric, true luxury is often simply nature refined.

The t-shirt that caught my husband’s eye is from a British brand called Sunspel — one of the first companies to import Sea Island cotton (above) from the Caribbean in the 1900s. At the time, the fabric was used to make luxurious underwear because its extra-long staple length gave it both softness and strength — ideal qualities for garments worn close to the skin. Today, Sunspel uses the material for polos, shirts and knitwear, and has even used it to manufacture a cotton-cashmere hybrid.

‘Very early on we recognised the quality of the fibre,’ says Nicholas Brooke, the executive chairman. ‘Sea Island cotton reflects something quite central to how we think about product. When the raw material is that good, the design can stay simple and the focus is on how it feels to wear.’ Sunspel source their special cotton from individual farms in Jamaica, and spin it in Switzerland. Maintaining such high levels of quality requires them to nurture their relationships with people at every stage of supply and manufacture which is, in part, what makes the end result so special to consumers.

Unlike synthetic blends engineered for convenience, the world’s rarest fibres carry the imprint of the place they originated in. They have a sense of place. Take vicuña, for example, which is often described (only half in jest) as ‘the fibre of the Gods’. Once reserved for Incan royalty, vicuña is now produced for whoever can afford it, in vanishingly small quantities. It is harvested from a protected wild animal of the same name once every two to three years. (The Andean animals are relatives of the llama, and likely the wild ancestors of domesticated alpacas.) It is impossibly fine and disarmingly soft (some people claim that it is softer than cashmere — and far more delicate) and therefore, priced accordingly. Luxury brands such as Hermès and Brunello Cucinelli use vicuña in an extremely limited number of pieces — typically scarves or outerwear.

At Loro Piana, the pursuit of lightness has led to the invention of what the house calls ‘Royal Lightness’. It took more than two years to develop and exists in yarn form (by blending silk with ultra-fine merino wool) and in fabric form (by combining silk with cashmere).

The numbers impart some sense of its rarity: the merino wool, sourced from Australia and New Zealand, measures just 13.5 microns (one-thousandth of a millimetre), a number achieved by only a fraction of global producers, and it is paired with exceptionally fine Mulberry silk. The end result is something similar to gossamer — so delicate that it pushes technicians to the very limits of what they can do. A reminder that, at this level, luxury is as much about technical precision as it is about provenance.

The UK is the custodian of some of the world’s most storied mills — where heritage and innovation exist in careful balance. At Johnstons of Elgin, for example, fibres are still dyed in the soft waters of the River Lossie, a process that lends a particular clarity to their cashmere and wool. The family-owned Elgin mill is one of the last remaining vertical mills in Scotland, meaning they dye, spin, weave and finish every item on site.

Other British brands, such as Dunhill, work with highly specialised mills in Yorkshire and the West Country to develop exclusive materials in very fine weights. ‘What clients respond to above all else is exclusivity,’ says a spokesperson for Dunhill. ‘The sense that a fabric is recognisably Dunhill and exists nowhere else.’

Silk — whose production dates back to Ancient China — is perhaps the most enduring luxury fabric; its appeal unchanged over time. Not, of course, the mass-produced iterations that dominate the market today, but silks woven using traditional techniques, where irregularities are not viewed as flaws, but as evidence of the human hand. The strong and lustrous fibre is produced by silkworms (Bombyx mori) that feed exclusively on mulberry leaves, while spinning their cocoons. These ‘envelopes’ are boiled to kill the larva and loosen the silk filaments — which are then reeled and woven into silk fabric.

The silkworm species, cultivation method, fibre length and weight all contribute to the silk quality. Grade 6A mulberry silk represents the pinnacle.

For me, the real luxury of these fabrics lies not only in their softness or scarcity, but in their stories. The appeal of such fibres, for designers and wearers, lies in their authenticity. The items that these fibres make carry a sense of geography; to wear one is, in some small way, to carry a piece of the landscape with you. These are materials that cannot be hurried or engineered; they depend on climate, animals, plants and human beings working together in quiet and unhurried harmony. Sometimes, it can feel as if the fashion industry is obsessed with speed; the value of these sorts of rare fabrics lies in the opposite. In patience. When it comes to fashion, the best things really do come to those who wait.

Headdresses have been making, well, headline news, thanks in part to one of the UK’s most famous wearers of headpieces, Isabella Blow, whose biopic The Queen of Fashion is due out this year.

Issy, as she was known, saw them as not merely a fashion statement, but as an extension of her identity, famously saying: ‘I don’t use a hat as a prop. I use it as part of me.’

Their renaissance has also been fuelled by Instagram and a flurry of lavish country-house celebrations. At a party at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, home of the Howden family, headpieces were as central to the spectacle as the setting itself.

For the Narnia-themed event, the insurance magnate David Howden wore a spectacular Aslan-inspired lion headdress commissioned from the Canadian costume designer Maryam of Eastern Wind Studio by his wife, Fiona, who has long been a passionate hat collector and wearer of headpieces.

She sees them as ‘an opportunity to dress up as a character and add glamour, fun and theatre to events’. Her hat collection, sourced from street stalls in Venice, Italy, together with commissioned pieces, ‘makes great dressing-up material for my girlfriends and daughters’ — and for Royal Ascot, which David's company sponsors. Both David and Fiona were in the Royal Procession last year.

Hats and headpieces have long been regarded as little pieces of theatre, as well as signifiers of status in country-house circles. They acted as a kind of visual shorthand, announcing style, self-assurance and, occasionally, the scale of one’s estate.

Consider the Devonshire House Ball of 1897, when Louise Cavendish appeared as Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, wearing an emerald, diamond and ruby crown topped with sweeping ostrich plumes, or the Rothschilds’ surrealist ball of 1972, which saw Audrey Hepburn drift beneath an exquisite birdcage-inspired creation.

In many ways, these pieces — designed to dazzle under candlelight and chandeliers — were the architectural counterparts of the country houses themselves: miniature palaces worn aloft.

‘There’s a natural dialogue between the architecture of a country house and the structure of a hat,’ says leading Society milliner Victoria Grant, whose muse is the ‘face of Ascot’, Martha, Lady Sitwell, and who has noticed a pronounced revival in country-house events as ‘theatres for dress,’ as she puts it.

‘Both are designed to be viewed from multiple angles, both balance proportion and drama, and both reward close inspection. Wearing a sculptural hat in a grand architectural setting feels coherent — each enhances the other.’

The renowned milliner and chairman of the British Hat Guild Stephen Jones describes hats as ‘small-scale buildings, engineered to balance, frame and hold drama’. He views hats as ‘a façade and a persona. You do become the headdress you are wearing’. Stephen often refers to the ‘grammar’ of hats: ‘in the language of fashion’, they are ‘the exclamation mark’.

Few people personify this more fully than the Hon Daphne Guinness, granddaughter of Diana Mitford, fashion muse, model and long-time friend of Blow. When Blow’s hats came up for auction in 2010, Daphne bought the entire collection. She views hats as wearable architecture: moving sculptural objects that exist in dialogue with the body, describing them as ‘shield barriers’.

Her hair alone has become a structural object — a headpiece in its most literal sense. Bi-coloured black and platinum, it is swept back into an impressively high beehive form. ‘When I think my hair needs a bit of help,’ she once remarked, ‘I just glue another bit onto my head.’ Flippant as it sounds, it captures her view of hats as art objects.

Blow’s sister-in-law, the fashion designer Selina Blow, also sees headpieces as a shield. ‘I see hats almost in an armorial sense — a safety thing, like a samurai putting on your kit and then putting on your hat.’ When she married, she wore a spectacular gold headpiece by Philip Treacy that looked almost like a coronal shield, underlining the idea that, unlike a dress, a hat must operate as an independent architectural structure. The piece later featured in an exhibition at the V&A Museum in 2015 and she still gives it the odd outing.

The architecture and social structure of hats may long have been synonymous with the country house, but they also create a code that resonated deeply with Elizabeth II. This became the subject of a play by the author and playwright Daisy Goodwin. By Royal Appointment hinged on two of the late Queen’s designers: the very British Hardy Amies (for clothes) and the Australian-born Frederick Fox (for hats), both of whom argued each element of her outfit mattered most.

Between them, they created a balance, but hats, at least publicly, won. For the Queen, hats were her status symbol, her message to the nation, her tool of non-verbal diplomacy. Hats were her most public symbol, akin to the crown itself. As Daisy wrote, ‘even a simple hat was a tool of public display and theatre’. She could convey a message more effectively in a hat than with words, which goes back to Stephen's message that hats have a grammar of their own.

One of the greatest theatrical headpiece designers was Oliver Messel, who created some of the most superbly architectural visions of fantasy for stage and film and is the subject of a new book, Oliver Messel: In the Theatre of Design, by his nephew Thomas Messel.

He describes his uncle as a ‘master of illusion… when used on stage, he was acutely aware that it was not close detail, but the effect seen by the audience from a distance that yielded the true impact’. Thus, the crown Messel designed for Vivien Leigh when she played Titania in the 1937 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Old Vic, may have looked appropriately regal from the stalls, but ‘when viewed closely, you can see it is made of things like ribbon, silver paper, silk, beads and Scotch tape, all held together on a thin wire frame,’ explains Thomas. ‘The effect was scintillating.’

Similarly, her headdress in the 1945 film Caesar and Cleopatra was made to look convincing enough to transform her into the Queen of Egypt, yet was constructed from anything he could grab to hand, including old sweet papers. ‘Imagine the effect of this in glorious Technicolor upon British morale after four grim years of war.’

Curiously, Society milliner Nicola de Selincourt attributes the present appetite for theatricality at country-house events to another period of deprivation: covid. ‘During lockdown, there was nothing. Perhaps we are seeing a kick-back, a revival of dressing up,’ she says, citing, too, the influence of television series such as Peaky Blinders and Downton Abbey, which ‘remind us how well everyone used to dress’.

What has changed, Stephen observes, is that hats have become ‘a marker of time, place and personality,’ adding that ‘their main purpose has become to be photographed in rather than worn. Within our era, this is genuinely new’.

Victoria agrees: ‘Social media has changed hat-wearing profoundly. People are more visually literate now and more confident about making a statement. We’re seeing a shift away from minimalism towards a more maximalist, expressive approach to dressing, especially for occasions.’

Instagram is awash with spectacular hat wearers and designs — even Christmas-cracker crowns. Last Christmas, the garden designer and writer Isabel Bannerman and her husband, Julian, found themselves wearing an oak-leaf crown and ship designed by The Shop Floor Project, spotted by their son on Instagram.

‘We do like crowns and hats, wreaths and anything to do with oak leaves and trees,’ she says, ‘and they always look good on a bust’ — where the oak-leaf crown now remains.

Fiona's eldest daughter, Talitha, a fashion stylist, sees social media as part of a broader shift. ‘People are trying to build more personal, evolving styles, and that definitely includes headpieces.’

Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that hats are, to borrow the great costume designer Edith Head’s phrase, ‘the first thing noticed and the last thing remembered’. After all, no one will ever forget Isabella Blow and her hats — not least thanks to her forthcoming biopic.

This feature originally appeared in the April 29, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.'

The Royal Ascot dress code is as integral to the event as the racing itself, but it wasn’t until 1807 (96 years after the meeting’s inauguration) that a code was decreed.

It stipulated that ‘men of elegance’ should wear ‘waisted black coats and white cravats with white pantaloons’. The architect of this edict was George Bryan ‘Beau’ Brummell (1778–1840), an ‘English dandy’ and arbiter of men’s fashion in Regency Britain.

Brummell was born in Downing Street, London, to a middle-class family. His father, private secretary to the Prime Minister Lord Frederick North, had ambitions for his son to become part of the ton — an aspiration they shared.

Brummell was educated at Eton before enlisting in the 10th Royal Hussars — solely because it was the favoured regiment of the Prince of Wales (the future George IV) — where his wit and style earned attention.

Despite lacking military competence, he was promoted from cornet to captain within three years, but resigned in 1797 when the regiment was sent to Manchester, citing the city’s undistinguished ambiance. His friendship with the Prince (and £30,000 inheritance) enabled rapid social ascension.

Brummell had a flair for fashion. At Eton, he accessorised the mandatory white cravat with a golden buckle and was later known for spending hours arranging his neckwear to look as if it had been tied at a moment’s notice.

Yet he was not ostentatious.

He rejected the then fashionable flamboyant velvet coats, embroidered waistcoats, lace ruffs and knee breeches with stockings for understated, impeccably tailored garments.

By day, he wore a navy wool coat, buff waistcoat, linen shirt, full-length trousers and riding boots, finished with a cravat, of course. By night, it was a blue coat, black or white waistcoat, black ankle-length trousers and black slippers, complete with striped silk socks.

His style prioritised good form, fine fabrics and sedate colours and gentlemen across the country followed, influencing the ‘Great Male Renunciation’. He encouraged the abandonment of wigs, brought equestrian style to town, chose not to match his coat to his trousers and opted for high-contrast black and white for evening — codes still obediently observed.

Royal Ascot's dress code has been relaxed in recent years, but in the Royal Enclosure ladies must still wear hats (or headpieces with a minimum base diameter of 4 inches) and dresses to knee length. Gentlemen continue to swelter in morning dress.

This feature originally appeared in the April 29, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

When the funeral procession for Elizabeth II conveyed her coffin to Windsor Castle, it was watched from a distance by the Queen’s beloved black mare, Emma. Lying on the Fell pony’s saddle was a Hermès silk scarf: a familiar feature of the late Queen’s attire and, for the sake of her carefully coiffed hair, often worn in place of a riding hat.

At the King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, I count at least 16 different silk scarves as I tour its latest exhibition ‘Queen Elizabeth – Her Life in Style’, a dazzling celebration of what would’ve been her 100th birthday, showcasing everything from the Coronation gown embroidered with Commonwealth emblems to the peach cocktail dress she wore for her James Bond cameo at the opening of the 2012 Olympic Games. It is the largest exhibition of her clothing ever staged, with more than half of the items exhibited for the first time. Burberry, a long-standing Royal Warrant holder, is marking the centenary celebrations with a new scarf depicting Balmoral Castle and inspired by the Old Stewart tartan worn by the Royal Family (below).

Writing in Queen Elizabeth II – A Lifetime Dressing for the World Stage (2022), Jane Eastoe describes the silk square, tied in a large bow, as ‘the perennial favourite’ of the monarch, who combined it with ‘all the finest aspects of country style’ such as ‘tailored tweeds’, ‘quilted jackets’ and ‘simple knitwear’. The headscarf was a ‘signature feature of her off-duty style’, agrees Caroline de Guitaut, surveyor of the King’s Works of Art and the curator of the new exhibition. ‘It enlivened whatever she was wearing because of the colours, the designs and the patterns,’ she tells me; and was a look ‘that the Queen absolutely owned’.

This ‘instantly recognisable’ style influenced contemporary designers, explains de Guitaut, who often ‘subverted it’ and ‘took it in a new direction’. Headscarves, chunky kilts and Union Jack sweaters stormed down the runway of Gucci’s Cruise 2017 show, for example. In 2018, Richard Quinn’s Balmoral Collection (which earned him the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design) included glossy scarves stitched and knotted together to create kaleidoscopic ensembles, one of which forms the exhibition’s final flourish.

That ‘new direction’, however, is constantly changing, with the pop world spawning surprising new poster girls for the silk scarf. Rihanna wore one tied around her head; Billie Eilish sported a geometric-print Chanel number for her 2025 British Vogue cover shoot.

Elizabeth II preferred Hermès, which began life as an equestrian brand in 1837. While she was seen in a multitude of different designs, I have just one Hermès carré and became its custodian quite by chance when I purloined an unwanted corporate gift that was languishing in my mother’s wardrobe. Today it’s covered in make-up smudges, testament to its many outings since I ‘liberated’ it several decades ago.

‘There is something wonderfully timeless about a headscarf,’ says Cate Allan, director of Richard Allan London, which has been making scarves since 1962. ‘A silk scarf has an extraordinary ability to transform an outfit with very little effort.’ Cate recommends styling it with other hardworking items in your wardrobe. ‘Even the simplest white shirt, tailored jacket or sweater feels considered once a silk scarf is introduced.’

With its circle of horse-drawn carriages, including the Gold State Coach, The Royal Mews scarf selected for the Queen’s funeral is typical of the equestrian designs she was drawn to, many of which appear at the exhibition. On a Jacqmar silk square, for example, polo players vie for the ball: ‘A nice reminder’, says Caroline, ‘of the way that the Queen would go to Smith’s Lawn and see Prince Philip’. Beside it, a jockey in striped silks gallops across a Margetson & Co. scarf which commemorates the Coronation Derby of 1953 and lists every Epsom Derby winner.

The headscarf — also a favourite with Princess Margaret and The Princess Royal — has an appropriately royal heritage. Silk production was once the preserve of the Chinese imperial court, while in Ancient Egypt, a fine linen scarf kept Queen Nefertiti’s towering blue wig and jewelled headpieces in place. A couple of millennia later, we find medieval trendsetter Eleanor of Aquitaine wearing a silk veil beneath her crown as a symbol of both wealth and piety, while the Renaissance fashion queen, Isabella of Portugal, reversed the look, draping a diaphanous rectangle of silk over her elaborately embroidered hennin headdresses.

In the mid-20th century, royal elegance met Hollywood glamour courtesy of Princess Grace of Monaco. She used a Hermès silk square embellished with Monaco’s coat of arms as a stylish sling when she hurt her arm in 1959.

‘When I wear a silk scarf, I never feel so definitely like a woman, a beautiful woman,’ declared Audrey Hepburn, who, like fellow style icon Jackie Kennedy Onassis, styled them with oversized sunglasses and white gloves. Such looks still resonate in the public subconscious. The headscarf ‘evokes travel, elegance and a certain cinematic confidence’, says Cate. ‘Yet it is also incredibly functional, tied under the chin — as favoured by Queen Elizabeth II — protecting the hair while framing the face perfectly.’

However, it wasn’t all glitz. The headscarf also possesses a pleasing wholesomeness about it. It was one of the first handprinted products sold by Laura Ashley in the 1950s, and Biba’s 1964 pink gingham version — which matched a shift dress in the same pattern — sold in their thousands. Though Elizabeth II was more interested in practical style than fleeting trends, she embraced the scarf’s versatility, reaching for one for formal occasions as well as for country pursuits. In 2016, she paired a pale blue skirt suit with a similarly-hued floral headscarf to meet Barack and Michelle Obama under a sodden sky at Windsor Castle (above).

I like to throw my scarf across my shoulders and knot it loosely enough that I can nudge it back up and over my head if rain starts to fall. My mother, a keen rider like Elizabeth II, sometimes wears a headscarf to the stables, but mucking out means you’ll never see her in silk one. I recently told her the probable value of the Hermès scarf she gave up. She was surprised, but fortunately made no move to reclaim it.

Since writers trade in words and ideas rather than lavish silk presents, I’m more commonly seen peering out from underneath a baseball cap. However, even this has been reappropriated, with fashionistas such as Hailey Bieber (above) and Gucci catwalk models wearing both. At the same time.

The headscarf’s reincarnations are seemingly endless. As L’Officiel recently noted: ‘It can be soft, playful, dramatic or minimalist, but above all, a headscarf brings flexibility, a "weapon" to elevate an outfit that fits neatly in the pocket’ — or a black Launer handbag if you’re Elizabeth II.

‘Queen Elizabeth – Her Life in Style’ is at The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, until October 18, 2026.

Good news: it’s getting warmer. Bad news: feet are coming out. Feet and potentially other body parts. Of course the question of what to wear so you don’t make your colleagues snigger depends on where you work. Corporate lawyer? No sliders. Tech bro? Well, I’d still humbly suggest no sliders.

‘Sandals are never acceptable in the office,’ says stylist Alice Hare. ‘I don’t need to see your hairy toe in a meeting. There’s a reason we never see the Royals in sandals.’

Alice, something of a Miranda Priestly when it comes to office dressing, says that men should avoid linen shirts in the office: ‘They’re just not smart enough, even if it’s 40°C.’

In truth, most offices these days are now so air-conditioned they’re only fractionally warmer than a fridge, so you don’t need to panic that morning and dress as if you’re off to the beach. The commute may be sticky, but the majority of your day won’t be. Dress for the most important meeting or event of your day. Are shorts really appropriate if you’ve got an 11 o’clock with that potential investor? Please stick to trousers.

Ultimately, you don’t want to be that fleshy, sitting close to colleagues or acquaintances revealing bits of you that feel quite intimate: knees; toes; too much thigh; upper arms that haven’t seen daylight for months. A jacket or blazer is a handy item to keep close.

In fact, blazers are generally your friend when it comes to the office because they’re such an easy way to elevate (fashion word klaxon) the rest of your outfit. I have a couple from the high street that are handy because they can go in the washing machine, but the Hutton (in linen, it’s allowed in blazer form) from With Nothing Underneath will serve you for many more years. Pair it with a t-shirt — the blazer means it still screams that you mean business — trousers and a pair of Mary Janes. Simple is easier when you're standing in front of your wardrobe at 6am. Also: clean shoes please, and no sportswear and crop tops.

Controversial linen shirts aside, natural fabrics are your friend. I own a black silk Sonia Rykiel dress which has done valiant corporate service for more than a decade. It’s breathable and also, crucially, a colour which — without being too indelicate — doesn’t reveal sweat patches.

Some years ago, I bought a dress from Cos in a fabulous silky, but not actually silk, green which I wore proudly to the office before a date, and only discovered when it was too late that I had to keep my arms clamped to my sides all day.

Learn from my mistakes.

My hero as a young boy was the Milky Bar Kid. He was a cowboy, but, more importantly, he wore, like me, a pair of glasses. He made spectacles cool and that was very important.

I had almost forgotten about him until I walked into E. B. Meyrowitz in the Royal Arcade, just off Bond Street. Here, I met the utterly delightful Sheel Davison-Lungley, owner and inspiration behind the company and a shoo-in for the nicest proprietor I have ever met.

The extraordinary thing about glasses is that, as a population, we take so little interest in what they look like — and perhaps more importantly, how they make you look. Yet, in my case, I wear them all the time. They are the first thing I put on in the morning and the last thing I take off at night.

My eyesight started going when I was in my late forties with a frustrating hereditary disease. I only wore glasses in childhood due to a squint, which was operated on. I haven’t been very lucky with my eyesight, but that changed when I walked into E. B. Meyrowitz.

Glasses are how people see me and part of my personality. They are me. My granddaughter doesn’t recognise me when she pulls them off my nose. This means that getting the right pair matters. They need to fit (my previous ones didn’t), be the right colour for your complexion and complement your jaw line, at the same time as highlighting your eyes.

Sheel, between plenty of laughs and storytelling, carefully measured my face. The proportions and variations are what we recognise each other by — a fact, strangely, I hadn’t acknowledged until then.

After the science came the art: a variety of frames in various hues was tried. I first thought I wanted a black pair, but soon realised it was too harsh. I cycled through various options before landing on the right pair: rectangular frames in dark-brown acetate, less hassle than a horn that needs looking after.

Being bespoke to me, I had to wait a while for the specs to be made until I could get my nose under them. Patience is key, but the result has been a transformation.

They are by far the most important piece of clothing I own (nobody sees the Bremont watch that my father gave me, as it hides under my cuff). They define my image and make me feel better and prouder of myself.

This feature originally appeared in the November 5, 2025, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

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If there is one piece of clothing inherently and undeniably British, it is the flat cap. Found everywhere from the Orkney Islands to Cornwall, the flat cap has various denominations: a Paddy cap in Ireland, a Dai cap in Wales, and a ‘bunnet’ in Scotland, a continuum of the original ‘bonnet’, which was replaced by ‘cap’ in about 1700.

Traditionally made from tweed or wool, the caps are constructed out of a single piece of fabric and have a stiffened yet malleable peak. They can trace their origins back to the Middle Ages — when a band was used to secure a piece of wool over the head in order to keep the wearer warm and safer from the elements. Back then, they were referred to as bonnets, or Tudor bonnets, to distinguish them from ones worn by women. In the 14th century, variations of the flat cap were common among people living in rural areas and farmers, particularly in Ireland, but it was the 1571 Act of Parliament that required every non-noble male over the age of six to wear a cap on religious days — a bid to boost the domestic wool trade — that secured its place in fashion history. And although the Act was repealed in 1597, the flat cap lived on to become a symbol of the working class.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, boys of all classes wore similarly peaked caps (though a little more rounded) of a prescribed colour and design as part of their school uniform, habitualising hat-wearing from a young age. As industrialisation took off, the headwear spread to towns and cities where they were adopted by newsboys to such an extent that the caps earned a new name: the newsboy cap.

Warm, durable, easy-to-clean and unfussy in appearance, it should come as no surprise that woollen flat caps soon sat atop the heads of wealthy gentlemen, who found them perfect for riding, shooting, stalking and other leisurely pursuits. Soon, members of the upper classes started to commission bespoke variations in luxurious fabrics such as fine wool and cashmere. The transformation from humble hat to practical style statement was complete.

When it comes to flat caps, size really does matter. Just ask Jayesh Vaghela, master hatter at Lock & Co: ‘We use the words “under hatted” as a kinder way of telling someone that perhaps their hat is too small for them.’ Jayesh and his team recommend measuring the head with a soft tape measure, positioned mid-forehead, about 2cm above the ears. The measurement, they say, should be taken in centimetres and an extra 1cm added to the figure. ‘In almost all cases, this technique works for the ideal soft-cap fit,’ says Jayesh. The way you wear it is equally important: centrally on the head and not cocked to the side (even if Al Pacino’s waistcoat and cocked flat cap is one of the greatest men’s fashion moments in cinematic history).

Hat-wearing began to decline after the Second World War, but the flat cap maintained its foothold, especially in rural areas. In recent years, its popularity has soared again courtesy of a certain programme (though the style seen in Peaky Blinders is the newsboy variant, which is looser and baggier than its predecessor and has an eight-panelled top). John Lewis reportedly saw sales of flat caps rise 83% in 2016 and 2017, and 25% each year following.

Crowning glory

For some time now, I’ve been anxious about putting my socks on.

Am I doing it wrong?

The cool kids, I’ve observed — let’s say those under 30 — have their socks on show. Similarly, almost everyone in my gym wears their ribbed socks pulled up over their leggings, as if they’re in a 1980s Jane Fonda class. My anxiety is sparked because those of us that are millennial-aged grew up thinking that having our socks on display was lame and that our feet must be encased in little trainer socks which must, on no account, be visible.

There are, of course, chaps, often to be found in Brentwood on a Friday night, who insist on wearing their loafers without any socks at all. Meanwhile, Paul Mescal (30) is very fond of pairing his Gucci loafers with white ankle socks. If you’re a member of a gentleman’s club and of a more advanced age, you may wear them very high up indeed, albeit discreetly underneath your Anderson & Sheppard suit trousers.

So, what is the right way to wear a sock, these days?

Alice Hare, stylist and holder of very firm sock opinions, says that any sock which cannot be pulled up to the mid-ankle is merely the pretence of a sock. There goes my whole sock drawer, in other words, because it’s littered with trainer socks, aka little feet bags. What would happen if someone saw our sock poking over our shoe? Would the sky fall in? No idea. For some reason, many of us are fearful of it.

The good news is that, since socks on show are back, we no longer have to shuffle around with cold ankles. Or stop every now and then to hitch up a little trainer sock that has wormed its way to the toes. Women, Alice instructs, should look to the likes of Comme Si, Hermani and Pairs ‘for ribbed socks in party-at-your-ankles shades to wear with loafers and Mary Janes. Or head to Italian brand Maria La Rosa for the ultimate in status symbol cocktail socks — their pearl-trimmed red pair is all kinds of Wuthering Heights.’

A note of caution: these will set you back around £100 a pair. Cheaper, everyday ribbed pairs, says Alice, can be sourced, like so many items, from Uniqlo.

‘For the gold standard in proper men’s socks, as well as New & Lingwood and Cordings, Campbell’s of Beauly have a wonderful striped selection,’ she adds. Novelty socks, it should be noted, are never acceptable, although Alice does approve of New & Lingwood’s skull-print numbers (which regularly sell out). ‘A flash of the former poking out of a loafer when a man sits down is my equivalent of a six pack, in fact.’

Having recently visited the Pope’s sock shop, Gammarelli, while in Rome, I would add that this is another terrific place to buy immensely elegant, silk or cotton socks in a vibrant range of colours. Papal red, if you fancy it, but also in blues, greens and purples. They make excellent presents if you’re in the Italian capital any time soon, because the assistants wrap them beautifully in tissue and boxes. Although if you can’t make it to Rome itself, they also offer mail order. Dead smart, wearing silk papal socks, no matter how old you are. 

The tailor’s invoice was terse. On April 4, 1766, Johann Adam Ströver submitted his bill for a dress he described simply as a ‘court gown made of silver fabric’. The gown was old-fashioned in silhouette, with its whale-boned bodice and enormous panniers, but its impact was dazzling, a glittering confection of heavy French silk embroidered with garlands of silver and white foliage and flowers. It was sumptuously ornamented with bands, swags, tassels and ciphers made from silver thread, silver braid and even solid silver, afterwards removed and melted down. One Swedish newspaper, Stockholms Post Tidningar, described it matter of factly as ‘a rather precious dress’.

Indeed it was, for Ströver’s gown was worn by Princess Sophia Magdalena of Denmark, a granddaughter of Britain’s George II, for her wedding to Crown Prince Gustav of Sweden, to whom she had been engaged since her fifth birthday. Today, the dress survives in Sweden’s Royal Armoury.

Princess Sophia’s gown reminds us that wedding clothes were not only white. Indeed, silver dresses were particularly favoured by Europe’s royal brides. For her marriage in 1816 to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Princess Charlotte of Wales, only daughter of George IV, wore a dress created by London dressmaker Mrs Triaud that featured layers of net stitched with bands of silver thread, known as ‘lama’. The high-waisted gown with its train and apron was a symphony of silver, ‘of silver lama on net, over a silver tissue slip, embroidered at the bottom with silver lama in shells and flowers’.

It was an unusual choice for the Princess, according to the Royal Collection Trust, who preferred simple styles. As in Georgian royal tradition, the wedding was held at 9pm, in the Crimson Drawing Room at Carlton House. By candlelight, the highly textured, metal thread-sewn gown sparkled.

Gowns like those worn by the Princesses were too costly for ordinary brides. The silk-embroidered, gold- and silver-buttoned wedding dress made for Edward I’s youngest daughter Elizabeth in 1297 was sewn by a team of 35 tailors paid 70 shillings, a year’s wages for a skilled craftsman. Instead, many would wear dresses after more general fashions of women’s clothes. William Hogarth’s The Wedding of Stephen Beckingham and Mary Cox, 1729, depicts the couple’s marriage ceremony that summer in the London church of St Benet, Paul’s Wharf.

The bride wears a fashionable robe a l’anglaise. It may be white, silver or grey and its bodice is decorated with vertical bands of gold embroidery. Save for the decorative details and heavy silks, indicated by Hogarth’s shimmering highlights, nothing differentiates Cox’s wedding dress from the gowns of the three women with her.

The dress worn by Sarah Maria Wright when she married Lincolnshire farm labourer Daniel Neal in 1841 — now in the V&A Museum — exactly resembles styles that were then ‘in fashion’ outside of London. It had a low neckline, full sleeves with gathered shoulders and a wide skirt. Made of cotton, it had a blockprint pattern of pink, red and blue (a ‘copy’ of more expensive designs), providing the new Mrs Neal with a practical, but smart frock to be worn often after her big day.

It typifies the habit — widespread among women of non-elite backgrounds — of women getting married in their best clothes, regardless of colour, with red, pink, blue and even black widespread. If white was chosen it was, in part, for practicality, as garments could be dyed easily or adapted with coloured accessories. The emergence of wedding-dress fashion distinct from mainstream women’s style is a 20th-century phenomenon, when a bride who might typically wear jeans appears in a dress closer to those worn by her Victorian antecedents.

The catalyst for widespread change was Queen Victoria’s decision in 1840 to wear ‘a white satin dress with a very deep flounce of Honiton lace, imitation of old’ for her marriage to Prince Albert. It was made by her dressmaker Mary Bettans and shaped by the Queen’s desire to boost two failing concerns: Devon lace-making and Spitalfields silk-weaving.

Victoria’s decision to be married in daytime, so that more people could see the wedding procession, may also have guided her choice away from a silver gown seen to best advantage in candlelight. She opted for white for her going-away ensemble, too: ‘a white silk gown, trimmed with swan’s down, & a bonnet with orange flowers’. Later, the Queen insisted all five of her daughters used Honiton lace in their wedding dresses. In 1871, the artistic Princess Louise designed her own Honiton lace veil.

Where the Queen led, others followed and white or near-white wedding gowns — seen in her time as a symbol of innocence and sexual purity — quickly supplanted other choices, as they have continued to do.

This article first appeared in the March 4 issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here.

Once upon a time, the Wild West was something we experienced at a safe distance, through books and films, or imagined via the romance of a long railway journey, or a picnic in a grassy meadow.

Right now, it feels as if the West is all around us, in our wardrobes, influencing our interiors and music, and even our language. Suede and well-worn leather jackets no longer read as costumes, but coveted staples. Fringing can be found where tailoring once reigned supreme and double denim is considered streetstyle chic. And our homes are a smörgåsbord of ranch-like textures, from supple saddle leather (John Lewis sells a saddle leather armchair which must mean it’s broken into the mainstream) and rough reclaimed timbers, to silky sheepskin.

Perhaps this new-found longing for a Wild West life is down to the tsunami of Taylor Sheridan television shows, chiefly Paramount+’s Yellowstone, 1883 and 1923 with their panoramic shots of a far-reaching Montana skyline and rustic interiors, themes of land, loyalty and legacy, and the fact that every male character, from the landmen to the lawyers, is clad in chaps and boots. ‘Cowboys,’ goes the popular meme, ‘because no woman has ever dreamed about being swept off her feet by an accountant.’

However, at the centre of Yellowstone is a female character, Beth Dutton — a surly, sultry force, played impeccably by Kelly Reilly and as mesmerising as her male counterparts. Beth stomps from barn to boardroom, dressed in floral dresses and battered boots, tailored blazers and statement outerwear. It’s a look that, in part, Britons have long embraced at summer music festivals, but in recent years has evolved and is at home on the King’s Road as it is on the fields of Glastonbury. That her style has resonated so strongly in the UK speaks to an appreciation of durability and craft, qualities already synonymous with luxury British fashion. Now it just comes with a twist of Americana.

Disclaimer: I am an American, but I have lived in London for 10 years, and I own a pair of cowboy boots, but did not feel inclined to break them out until fairly recently — to a Zach Bryan concert in Hyde Park and to my daughter’s Cowgirl themed sixth birthday, but also to dinner at my local pub and to a friend’s non-cowboy-themed birthday party. What would have once made me stand out from the crowd in a ‘she’s not from here’ kind of way, is now cool.

‘Cowboy boots are the mainstay of our boot business,’ says shoe-designer Penelope Chilvers. The brand has stocked an iteration of a cowboy boot ever since they launched, but 2025 sales were up 48% year on year, and 70% of sales are first-time customers purchasing a pair of the boots. And it goes beyond boots: Hermès and Marie Lichtenberg stock much longed-for Western-inspired bandana scarfs, as do, at the slightly more affordable end of the market, Gigi Hadid’s Guest in Residence’s brand and Kujten.

‘I recently chased the chicest lady down the street to ask where her brown fringed coat was from,’ says Louise Roe, the founder of Sharland England, ‘It was the perfect chocolate brown and slightly oversized on the shoulder. I didn’t think I loved cowboy cool until that moment. There’s a modern, slightly more refined version of cowboy that I’m into.’

Double denim, or the ‘Canadian tuxedo’, is the trickiest part of the cowboy uniform to master, but it, too, is making a comeback (though influential people such as designer Tom Ford never stopped wearing it after its peak in the 1980s). ‘I love the nostalgia a denim shirt brings to a look — it's comforting and casual’ says Pip Durrell, the founder of With Nothing Underneath. The brand’s own iteration was their best selling shirt of 2025 with sales twice what they were in 2024. Brunello Cucinelli sells elevated versions of the denim shirt for both men and women: with mother-of-pearl buttons for the former, and bead embellishing for the latter. Three years ago, Maison Margiela’s collaboration with American textile company Pendleton Woolen Mills made headlines in fashion magazines and online the world over. John Galliano, Margiela’s creative director from 2014-2024, selected three mid-century weaves from the heritage brand’s archive to construct the collection. The plaid, check and fringed pieces are still available to purchase online.

Rooted in American workwear, but long championed by designers such as Ralph Lauren that are popular on both sides of the pond, denim-on-denim has evolved from a utilitarian necessity into a lived-in look that screams confidence. And it's neatly aligned with the British affection for clothes that soften and improve with age. A bit of market research into my own closet reveals that I own five, well-worn denim shirts. One has a pointed yoke and pearl snap buttons; two are from With Nothing Underneath and I wear them every week, in London and the countryside.

For younger generations, Americana feels less like a trend, more a quiet act of rebellion. Gen Z has turned thrifting into an art form, wandering through vintage stores and scrolling resale apps in search of hidden treasures. They’re stepping away from fast fashion and toward pieces with history — clothes that have lived a little and that carry stories in their seams. With its faded denim and weathered leather, Americana feels honest and real. It offers something steady and soulful at a time when so many young people are still shaping who they are and how they want the world to see them. Plus, there’s a lot of it leftover from the late 1970s and 1980s.

The creeping influence of Americana is now so strong that you might even spot a cowboy hat or two while out and about in the capital. Yes, cowboy hats. In London! Don’t believe me? Take a trip to Public House Group’s immensely popular restaurant The Fat Badger when Alan Power and the Take Twos are performing and you’ll spot clusters of city slickers wearing them, slinging beers and singing along as if they were in a Wild West saloon and not an upscale pub on Golborne Road.

Our homes, like our wardrobes, are not immune to the trend. ‘Recently, I’ve been drawn to using handwoven textiles such as quilts and antique rugs as wall hangings, with a beautiful bronze pole,’ says interior designer Natasha Quick. ‘I love the sense of craft involved, and it adds an element of informality.’ It is not the first time that the Brits have sought interior design inspiration from their American friends. Contrary to conventional wisdom, classic American decoration is more than a pale imitation of English: Sister Parish (a decorator, not a nun), Rose Cumming, Dorothy Draper and Billy Baldwin were all innovators rather than pastiche merchants. And then there's the irony that the high priestess of classic English decoration, Nancy Lancaster, was from Virginia, who added wit, humour, comfort and good plumbing to miserable English country houses. At the time of writing, Kendall Jenner’s ‘Cozy Mountain Home’ reveal video has more than four million views on YouTube. The informality, I think, is key. British interiors historically lean towards the more formal, so a touch of the West can help break things up and lend a room a level of accessibility and warmth.

It would be remiss of me to write about Americana’s infiltration into British culture without acknowledging the global dominance of Taylor Swift (above). The American singer-songwriter, who honed her craft in Nashville, the country music capital of the world, recently played eight sold-out nights at Wembley Stadium, the most number of performances at any stadium on her record-breaking Eras Tour. Taylor’s country ballads about achy-breaky hearts, bad boys and fractured friendships have resonated far beyond their American origins. In the UK, her appeal has shaped not only musical tastes and popularised Western dress and friendship bracelets, but pushed a romanticised vision of American storytelling. Sequinned jumpsuits and bedazzled cowgirl hats will forever be the definitive look for generations of women en route to the Eras Tour.

As with most wider trends, it’s likely these cultural touchstones intersect with a desire for authenticity and comfort. Americana through the British lens is more subtle, more layered, maybe even more wearable. From catwalks to country homes, the pull of the Western aesthetic has never felt stronger. It’s “Cheerio” meets “Yeehaw” and I, for one, am here for it. Giddy Up Ya’ll!

And we’re off. Nearly. Cheltenham is almost upon us. But what to wear? It’s not Royal Ascot, but it’s still quite the week and you don’t want to embarrass yourself in the Guinness Tent.

Here are a few (clothing) tips. For horse tips you’ll have to ask someone else.

1. Think warmth. It’s March. Wind whips around that racecourse like a tornado. Thermals are your friend. ‘Thermal tights over thermal knickers,’ advises Georgia Toffolo, who says Cheltenham is her favourite week of the year and takes dressing for it with due seriousness. ‘And disposable hand and feet warmers, like you use for skiing'
2. You don’t want bare limbs. See above. There will be women in tiny miniskirts, but they may regret this sartorial decision by the first race
3. Skirt suits, on the other hand, are dead chic. ‘I love a skirt suit,’ says Isabel Spearman, ‘and will probably wear a beloved Cefinn (now closed, but available to shop second hand) one in a beautiful blue — it feels modern and (importantly) comfortable'
4. Tweed. Do not be afraid of looking like a tweed factory has thrown up on you. Tweed coat, tweed trousers, tweed waistcoat and so on. The Cheltenham look, in recent years, has become Peaky Blinders (those baker boy hats) meets Toad of Toad Hall. You will blend in wearing almost any form of tweed
5. And/or, look to the brand Holland Cooper. Its eponymous founder, Jade, is another who takes dressing for this week with due care and attention, and her label features long trench coats, trousers, and warm jerseys with gold button detailing that makes them look a bit more upmarket than your average jersey, all of which would work in the paddock
6. Very bright colours are more Ascot. The colour scheme for Cheltenham is mud, really. Think browns and beiges or more muted colours if you don’t want to stick out
7.  Hats. I like a brown trilby, which can look especially dashing on women. Very handy to hide under if it’s raining, and it means you’ll worry less about your hair. Mine came from Oliver Brown, but Holland Cooper do them too. Or, says Georgia, buy a faux-fur bucket hat for a fiver from eBay. ‘Very Camilla-esque,’ she says approvingly, in reference to the Queen. Although she adds that Princess Anne is a good source of fashion inspiration for this week — think thick woollen overcoats, scarves, suede boots
8. Ideally flat shoes or block heels only. You’ll spend a lot of time on your feet, probably hurrying between the paddock, the bookies, and the grandstand. If you’re very posh, you may be in a box, or the Turf, but you’ll still probably want to escape a couple of times and mingle with the masses. This is not the moment for stilettos
9. Don’t panic, you’ll be quite safe in Granny’s fur. Nobody’s going to lob a bucket of paint on your mink stole at Cheltenham

Now that the average new car has become more ‘domestic appliance’ than ‘romantic means of transport’, few drivers feel the need to don special clothing before getting behind the wheel.

Not like in the early years of the automobile, when harness maker Alfred Dunhill saw the money-making potential in the ‘new horsepower,’ quickly building-up a catalogue of ‘Motorities’ packed with ankle-length motoring coats, sheepskin-lined gauntlets and oilskin chauffeur’s caps.

For £5 5s, Dunhill would even sell you a combined trouser and knee apron number that was ‘indispensable to drivers of Panhard, Daimler and all cars with pedal manipulation. It is made of best calf leather, lined woollen cloth, is absolutely storm and wind proof, and so designed as to leave the legs perfectly free…..’

So-called ‘drivers’ don’t know they’re born these days, with their heated seats and steering wheels and phone apps that warm-up their interiors before they’ve even left the house. Which perhaps makes it all the more surprising that car clothing has made a comeback.

Not so much pre-War knee aprons, but items that were popular during the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, i.e before they came to attract ridicule when worn by people driving around in Morris Marinas and Ford Zephyrs, safely sealed them from the elements .

We’re talking about garments such as driving gloves (perforated leather and string-backed variety; nowadays, you can pick up an excellent pair at Swaine) and the once-essential ‘car coat’, a creation that tailoring guru David Saxby says was born out of necessity when driving positions changed from upright to laid-back.

Long, old-style coats got in the way, so the buttock-skimming car coat was born — shorter, easier to handle the controls in, and easier to walk in, too.

Typically made from sheepskin, suede or corduroy, the once ubiquitous car coat became as synonymous with well-to-do businessmen as with a certain type of ‘geezer’ — hence their appearance in period television shows as diverse as The Good Life (worn by plastics exec Jerry Leadbetter) and The Sweeney (worn by maverick detective Jack Regan).

nowadays, you can pick up an excellent pair at Swaine) and the once-essential ‘car coat’, a creation that tailoring guru David Saxby says was born out of necessity when driving positions changed from upright to laid-back.

Long, old-style coats got in the way, so the buttock-skimming car coat was born — shorter, easier to handle the controls in, and easier to walk in, too.

Typically made from sheepskin, suede or corduroy, the once ubiquitous car coat became as synonymous with well-to-do businessmen as with a certain type of ‘geezer’ — hence their appearance in period television shows as diverse as The Good Life (worn by plastics exec Jerry Leadbetter) and The Sweeney (worn by maverick detective Jack Regan).

Scotland’s House of Bruar does one in herringbone tweed for £295, Cordings offers a water-resistant effort (£495) — or, instead of spending £4,495 on a decent second-hand motor, you could buy Loro Piana’s ‘Ghibli’ model.

Driving glasses are also back thanks, in part, to the revival of the Italian Renauld brand that created the uber-cool shades worn by actor Rossano Brazzi as he threads his ‘Rosso’ coloured Lamborghini Miura through the Italian alps at the start of 1969’s gold-robbery caper The Italian Job.

For £1,595, Renauld will sell you a pair just like Rossano’s. Or you could have some the same as Steve McQueen wore in the mind-numbing 1971 car race movie Le Mans (£995), or a copy of the ‘Renauld 61s’ worn by Scottish Formula One (F1) star Jim Clark during the 1960s.

Moving to the lower half of the body, what about ‘driving trousers’? I’m not sure these existed ‘back in the day’, but they do now — at Porsche Design, at least.

According to its website, the £260 ‘Active’ driving trouser is ‘made from the finest Italian fabric’ with that most middle-aged of touches, ‘an elastic waistband’ and a ‘drawstring with Porsche Design branding’.

And if that’s not already a bridge too far towards being properly dressed for the morning commute, the purpose-built strides ‘go perfectly with the active driving blouson, or for business, with the active driving blazer…… for all-over athleisure’. Ouch.

But as anyone who has watched those YouTube videos of racing drivers frantically ‘heel and toe-ing’, the most important piece of driving kit is the footwear.

Sporty types favour the race-approved ‘bootees’ by firms such as Sparco and OMP or, for classic car fans, the vintage-look Pacto models.

But if you just want a shoe for regular driving, it's hard to beat, well, what’s known as a driving shoe — a soft, suede or leather moccasin, often with a heel protector and a grippy sole.

It’s a type of footwear that dates back to 1963 and the birth of the ‘Car Shoe’ company outside Milan, the products of which came to prominence after being seen on the hallowed feet of VIPs such as President John F Kennedy, auto tycoon Giovanni Agnelli and actress and film maker Sofia Coppola.

Back in the 1980s, Isabel Ettedgui was a designer for the historic driving kit and automotive leather manufacturer Connolly when she discovered Car Shoe during a business trip to Monaco.

‘I bought a pair and took them back to Connolly HQ with the suggestion that we should do something similar — but the people in charge said no,’ Isabel told Country Life.

A few years later, her belief in the idea was vindicated when the Tod’s driving shoe took the luxury world by storm — and she admits to having been niggled by the missed opportunity ever since.

But now that she’s in charge of Connolly (the business was purchased by her late husband, Joseph Ettedgui, 25 years ago) Ettedgui has realised her dream of re-imagining the driving shoe in the form of the new, £720 Connolly Driving Loafer.

Spanish-born fashion and accessories designer Alvaro Gonzalez developed the new Connolly shoe using glove-making techniques, creating a thin, lightly patterned rubber sole attached with cross-stitching inspired by the leather binding of a sports car and coloured it ‘British Racing Green’.

Uppers are made from soft suede and nubuck and assembled using more cross-stitching, with the glove-like construction allowing the shoe to wrap ‘with anatomic precision’ around the foot thanks to an ergonomically-shaped instep and integrated tongue. The first run quickly sold-out following the shoe’s launch in mid December, and production of a second batch is currently underway.

But what is it about such shoes — and the other bits of driving kit that Connolly specialises in — that's led to the growing popularity of the driver ‘look’? “From the Connolly point of view, driving clothes are just part of our story,’ says Ettedgui. ‘But what is interesting is the real impact that last year’s movie F1 had on fashion. Now, it’s not only “Sunday drivers” who are buying items such as our signature car vest, it’s all sorts of people.’

Other Connolly classics include a three-quarter length sheepskin car coat, leather driving helmets and goggles — and the brand’s famous black leather driving gloves, which place added emphasis on Sir Winston Churchill’s ‘V for victory’ sign by picking-out the middle and fore-finger of the right hand in yellow or red….

It does mean ‘victory’, doesn’t it?

James Bond might epitomise sartorial slickness, but Daniel Craig’s tenure as 007 saw a wardrobe shift to mix refined with real-world wearability. It is no surprise to hear, then, that he requested Crockett & Jones footwear for some of his escapades.

Established in 1879 by brothers-in-law James Crockett and Charles Jones, the company, still run by the Jones family, began life making men’s boots in its Northampton factory. It soon earned a stellar reputation and, by 1900, was exporting its creations around the world.

Sir Ernest Shackleton wore Crockett & Jones boots for his Endurance expedition in 1914 and the company was commissioned to supply British troops during the First World War. In 1924, it won royal patronage when the Duke of York, later George VI, visited the factory and, in 2017, it was awarded a Royal Warrant by the then Prince of Wales.

Pictured is the Islay Derby, a round-toe country boot built to accompany the multi-tasking modern gentleman. The boots have a storm-welt construction (an extra flap of leather running along the perimeter), which provides excellent water resistance, rubber Dainite soles for all-weather traction and a handsome scotch-grain leather that will mature like a fine wine.

Comfortable and versatile, they are tough enough for traipsing the Scottish Highlands (as demonstrated by Daniel Craig in Skyfall) and svelte enough for the more urbane environments, encapsulating the company’s adage ‘made to be worn’.

The Islay full brogue Derby boot costs £655. Visit the Crockett and Jones website for more information.

My own personal darning revival happened during the early days of covid. In the first lockdown, I’d cleaned everything that didn’t move and I don’t like banana bread, so I was looking for something else to do. During one of these cleaning sessions, I found a box of cashmere jumpers that had become victims of the moth. I’d put them away thinking that one day I’d mend them, but, in my heart, I knew this was a delaying tactic for their inevitable resting place: the bin.

Perhaps, now, they could be saved? I had some rudimentary darning skills taught to me by my grandmother. She and her four sisters, born during the First World War and becoming young wives and mothers during the Second, knew thrift like a family friend. They all had good hands. They could sew, crochet and knit — and, of course, they could darn. I always marvelled at how they made a hole in a sweater or sock vanish or, if it were too large for invisible mending, cover it with tiny, neat stitches.

I ordered darning wool online. Years ago, I’d interviewed a woman about keeping chickens and asked if she had advice for first-timers. ‘Get some ex-battery hens, because, however many mistakes you make, you’re still going to give them a better life,’ she said. I kept this in mind as I looked at my jumpers and cards of wool. However poor my darning might be, I was taking something I couldn’t wear and potentially transforming it into something I could.

To get started, I went to the internet’s knowledgeable grandmother, YouTube, and watched dozens of hypnotically soothing videos of women working magic with thread. I remembered how, if my own grandmother didn’t have a wooden darning mushroom to hold the fabric taut as she stitched, she used a light bulb. I gathered my sewing basket and a light bulb and got started. My efforts were imperfect, but immensely satisfying. I loved defying the tyranny of fast fashion, one stitch at a time.

In my research into techniques, some of the most exciting websites and videos transcended darning as a practical skill and turned it into art. This wasn’t your grandmother’s darning. It reminded me of the Japanese art of kintsugi, where breaks and cracks in porcelain are repaired with lacquer and gold, the mends visible because they honour the object’s history and renewal, embracing the flaws and enhancing its beauty.

Many of these new visible darning techniques come from Japan. Beyond Darning: Creative Mending Techniques by Hikaru Noguchi has clear diagrams of myriad stitches and mends, but it’s more than that. Hikaru is a textile designer and a leading light in the Japan Darning Association — the very existence of such an organisation tells you a lot — and many of the projects in her book are for brooches and badges to pin over holes. The brooches have names such as After Chaos and Ruins, and they serve a greater purpose than simply covering up holes. They use precious scraps of fabric from unsalvageable clothes, such as a baby’s dress or a favourite shirt, and gives them a second life.

British textile artist Alexandra Brinck — whose book Knit Repair: A Comprehensive Guide to Invisible Mending for Knitwear will be published by Quadrille/PRH this year — says: ‘The Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi is something that really appeals to me. In the same way that kintsugi is used to celebrate imperfections as part of an object’s history, using visible mending techniques on textiles is a wonderful way to enhance and elevate them. I especially love when a garment becomes an ongoing work in progress—my favourite pair of jeans is a textile ship of Theseus…

‘I’ve been passionate about mending all my life and, for the past few years, it’s been the main focus of my work,’ Alexandra continues. ‘Perhaps the most exciting part is the creative problem solving. Although a lot of repairs are fairly routine, the ones I love best are the really complicated commissions, where I start off with no idea of how to carry out the work — or even if it’s actually possible.’

When it comes to providing an item with a new lease of life, Alexandra believes that, often, it’s less about the physical object than keeping a memory alive. ‘People want me to restore garments that hold special meaning to them,’ she reflects. ‘Quite often, they’ll contact me to have a garment repaired as part of a grieving process (whether consciously or not). It feels very special to be allowed to be part of people’s lives in a small way.’ As we all attempt to stitch together our perfectly imperfect existences, darning honours what we once had and gives it a whole new life.

‘Beyond Darning: Creative Mending Techniques’ by Hikaru Noguchi is published by Quickthorn (£19.99).

This feature originally appeared in the February 18, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

The 2026 Winter Olympic Games are well underway in the deeply fashionable city of Milan, which means that it would be remiss not to look back through the Country Life archives to see what the fashionable winter sports goers of yesteryear were wearing on the slopes and the ice rinks of Europe.

So, without further ado, button your salopettes and tighten your goggles for a gentle downhill ski through memory lane.

The 1900s

One has to feel for all Edwardian ladies. The outfits that it was suggested they wear for skiing and ice-skating, though undeniably elegant, were ridiculously impractical.

How on earth did anyone manage more than a few steps trussed up in a corset and with those perilously long skirts?

The 1910s

Though the corseted waist have been dispensed of in this picture, the ankle-length skirts are still very much on the scene.

Still, this trio of London ladies appear to be enjoying the delights of winter in the capital — when the ice still froze and we weren’t pummelled by incessant rain.

The 1920s

Praise be to Burberry, who came to our collective rescue in the 1920s with something beginning to resemble practical sporting attire.

The British-born brand manufactured warm woollen sweaters in still-fashionable prints and trousers (which only gained mainstream acceptance among women during the First World War) for snowy conditions.

The 1930s

The 1930s presented us with two very distinctive offerings. The left, again from Burberry, is a (more) practical, no-nonsense outfit for tackling the slopes; the right, from Schiaparelli, is an uber-glamorous ensemble that looks like it belongs inside the wardrobe of Marlene Dietrich.

The 1940s

Following the Second World War, outfits, for a time at least, were a little more muted, but somehow still far from practical.

The one on the left, from Daly’s of Glasgow, features a mini skirt, that I suppose is more practical for skating in. Made from thick corduroy, it was less likely to fly up, but probably a tad uncomfortable if you fell in it. The Lilywhites proofed-cotton jacket with its fold-away hood looks more useful — but cotton in the snow, really?

The 1950s

What this lacks in glamour it makes up for (finally) in practicality and versatility. The pom poms are a playful touch.

The 1960s

Glamour was finally back on the catwalk and the slopes. Somehow the practicality has already gone missing though.

The outfit on the left features knitted trousers, which look impeccable on the model, but would fare terribly in the snow.

The 1970s

Huzzah! We have arrived at the end of our tour through the Archive and, finally, a bold check skiing outfit that is actually waterproof. My work here is done.

The rugby shirt: a perpetual, indefatigable superstar. Conceived for the clatter and oomska of the pitch, the past five decades have seen it reconfigured as a staple of au courant wardrobes across the world.

Its genesis came in 1823 at Rugby School in Warwickshire, when William Webb Ellis apocryphally picked up a football and charged towards the opposition. Back then, an impractical uniform of white, long-tailed shirts was worn — being readily available and easy to boil wash — with coloured caps to differentiate between teams and avoid boys indiscriminately trampling each other into the mud.

In 1846, shortly after the sport’s rules were formalised, it was decreed that the caps must go and that one team must wear colourful garb in their place. Woollen jumpers with oversized collars — also folly, given the sport’s sweaty, rain-flecked demands — and white trousers became standard. During the 1870s, sense was finally seen and the thick, tightly stitched cotton silhouette we know today was introduced. Robust and resistant to the ferocity of the pitch, patterned in school-coloured ‘hoops’ and replete with a smaller, rigid collar (less prone to being yanked in the scrum) and rubber buttons (kinder on the faces of opponents, hidden behind a cotton fold), a paragon was born.

For decades, the rugby shirt remained the preserve of the quad and cloisters; worn off-field as a signifier of schooling. That was, however, until the release of Lindsay Anderson’s 1963 kitchen-sink classic This Sporting Life, a rough-and-tumble tale of a northern rugby league player’s on- and off-field travails, which popularised the shirt in the public imagination of Britain and within the varsity milieu of the USA (thanks in no small part to the battered rakishness of Richard Harris’s Frank Machin).

Across the globe, another touchstone arrived in 1965 with the publication of Take Ivy —a hallowed Japanese style tome and pacific primer on collegiate American fashions by photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida, named after a Dave Brubeck jazz standard. Shot on Ivy League campuses, it kickstarted the trend for preppy threads among the hip youth of Tokyo’s Shinjuku City and Ginza — not least the rugby shirt, of which it included a popping red example. The stage was set: the rugby shirt’s transition to the casual wardrobes of the wider populace was in motion.

The shirt’s first real break from its academic confines occurred in a location almost as unforgiving as the pitch. In the winter of 1970, American climber Yvon Chouinard was mountaineering in Scotland. Spotting a clued-up British climber wearing a rugby shirt, he figured that the top’s sturdy, 14oz cotton construction would be perfect for scrambling across rock faces and its stiff collar ideal at stopping his heavy slings of climbing hardware from chafing. Chouinard brought home a vivid azure shirt with yellow and red hooping. His Californian climbing compatriots loved it, so he imported more and labelled them under his nascent outdoors brand: the now totemically influential Patagonia. ‘Rugby is a skin-shredding game; for decency’s sake, the clothes are designed to outlast the flesh,’ claimed a 1975 catalogue for Chouinard’s bricks-and-mortar store, Great Pacific Iron Works. ‘A number of years ago we stumbled onto the obvious parallels.’

The years since have seen the shirt proliferate across demographics. Its bombproof construction and timeless aesthetic transcend fashion’s transient whims and it is currently enjoying the purplest patch of its long history. It remains ubiquitous across the inventories of preppy stalwarts, including Ralph Lauren, and, in London, the wave has been crested by vintage-chic outfitters such as William Crabtree & Sons, Black & Blue 1871 (with neat facsimiles of the Patagonia shirts, plus throwback public-school designs) and, especially, Savile Row’s Drake’s (founded in 1977), which has embraced slimmer cuts, shrunken collars and painterly colourways.

‘We wanted something that felt casual yet substantial — a garment with character, rooted in heritage, but easy to wear,’ explains brand and creative manager Junyin Gibson. ‘At Drake’s, we like pieces that have a bit of soul; that stand the test of time, and can be both slightly scruffy and deeply elegant. The rugby shirt embodies that balance perfectly.’

Although the game itself might have long capitulated to tackle-abating, skin-tight technical fabrics, the 21st century’s sartorial innovators have kept their own versions of rugby’s quintessential aesthetic in rugged good health.

This article first appeared in the February 4 issue of Country Life. For more information and to subscribe, click here.

My perfumer, Anna, is one of three who work at Floris, one of the world’s oldest and most distinguished perfumers. She is a scent sensei; an Olympic-level smeller. She tells me if a colleague came into the store wearing a scent that wasn’t Floris she’d nose it out straight away. Sniffer dogs fear her.

I am visiting the shop on Jermyn Street to have a bespoke scent made. I first heard about this service because my Dad’s girlfriend gave it to him as a present. He came back on the train from London, the heart and home of Floris since 1730, reeking of ‘Mojo 61’ — the name of his signature scent — and self confidence.

Anna began by telling me a bit about the centuries-old perfumery. It was founded by Juan Famenias Floris who moved over from Menorca and began selling combs, shaving products and perfumes with his wife Elizabeth in 1730, in the shop which used to double as the family home and remains Floris’ headquarters today. It is still run by their descendents, now in their ninth generation (although their surname has changed to Bodenham). ‘It’s a lovely thing, because we only have this one store, so although we’re a large brand, we are not diluted. It all has to come from here,’ Anna says.

In 1820, Floris received a Royal Warrant (which went on to become one of many) as Smooth Pointed Comb Maker to George IV. Their interest in creating perfumes gradually grew and in 1863 Florence Nightingale penned a letter to one ‘Mr Floris’, thanking him for the ‘beautiful sweet-swelling nosegays’. Sir Winston Churchill purchased fragrances from the company in 1934 (including a bottle of the brand’s Special No. 127 Eau de Toilette, which is a ‘refreshing citrus blend of bergamot and orange’, if you wanted to know what he smelt like). Marilyn Monroe also shopped at Floris and Ian Fleming was a regular customer, and even wrote about the perfumer in his 1995 novel Moonraker. He was partial to No.89 Eau de Toilette, another citrusy medley.

‘One of the greatest privileges for me is that we have these fragrances that go back 200 years, and it gives you an idea what was going on in that time. Not just: these are the facts, but really: these are the feelings,’ says Anna. ‘Perfumes reflect the zeitgeist of the time.’ She thinks a couple of years ago the trend was for very lactone (milky and creamy) and comforting scents ‘for an anxious time where people needed things that were quite reassuring’. Now she thinks people are more drawn to gourmand scents, ‘really sugary: salted caramel, coffee, rich, deep, all these things’.

We are sitting in the perfumery, which is where the artisans at Floris have always created their scents. It is a dark wood-panelled room with navy curtains and seat cushions and a grand yet well-loved wooden desk that divides myself and Anna. This is where she will do her work. There is a sense of majesty about the room, and magic too, as vials of potion-like scents line the glass-fronted cabinet behind her. ‘We are going to be making a custom fragrance, around your skin,’ Anna tells me, explaining how scent changes when it’s applied to flesh. I hadn’t put any perfume on that morning; Anna congratulates me on this.

Many perfumers have a background in chemistry, but Anna studied the science of the senses and, after finding that she had a particular interest in olfactory, went on to study perfumery and psychotherapy. ‘I’ve been trying to mold the two together ever since,’ she says. She asks me what I typically wear. My answer (‘Um, there’s a dark blue one that was a gift. And Jo Malone something, maybe nectarine? And a large body spray from The Body Shop which I sometimes use. Something in the peachy family, I think’) doesn’t deter her. ‘Is it floral?’ she asks, of my primary perfume. I nod. ‘Woody?’

‘No,’ I reply. ‘It’s strong.’

‘This is where we’re going to get into interesting territory,’ Anna says with a smile, ‘because language in smell is tricky … I had a woman just this morning who had mentioned the word fresh three or four times, and I realised quite quickly that what she was noticing as fresh is not at all what I would have introduced as fresh, if she left me to our own devices. It's really important that I understand what you mean, and the best way to do that is when we're smelling together.’

She goes on to say, very kindly, that it’s not an issue that I can’t remember the scents I already have, as we are going to create something unique. ‘I tend to go for things that are kind of like autumn colours,’ I offer, keen to be understood. ‘Woody and grounded, not super sweet, quite rich, but not overpowering. Like a stone fruit.’ I elaborate. ‘But NOT cinnamon. And I like the idea of a sort of androgynous smell.’

She nods her head, and begins to pluck down a few bottles. ‘We begin by choosing a foundation. Citrus, floral, woody or amber. We are going to go through these together and you must say if there’s something that you like. Only say if it’s something you’d wear, because there will be plenty of fragrances that you like but which are not for you,’ she says, sagely. ‘Then we will whittle that selection down, however big it is, to just two. We will test them on your hand and choose one, and build everything else from there.’ Herein begins a process of fervent sniffing. I do it blind, Anna keeping the labels of the scents hidden from me so I can’t be influenced by what I think I’ll like. ‘People think something's masculine or feminine based on the picture of the lady or the man on the box,’ she says.

Turns out, I am very good at knowing what I don’t like. ‘Too manly,’ I say to one. ‘Too powderly for me, like an old person’s blusher compact,’ I deem another. ‘God no, that’s like Marzipan,’ is a further remark. ‘That’s a bit of me,’ I say, finally, to a scent Anna afterwards informs me was created for Queen Victoria’s wedding day. Clearly I have a right regal hooter.

I wonder if I’m being too definitive. ‘No,’ Anna says. ‘It’s harder with someone who says yes to everything.’ The process is long and we get to chatting as we smell, about our upbringings, our careers, our love lives, gender and what our patronus’ would be if we were in Harry Potter (Anna’s would be a dolphin). You couldn’t be in this kind of job if you weren’t curious about people.

Before we slim my selection of base scents down to two, she advises I take a ‘nose break’, as I am beginning to be overwhelmed by the scent of the alcohol in each vial, rather than the scent itself. To remedy this, she suggests more alcohol, of a different kind, and fetches some Champagne. ‘The bubbles help,’ she says. ‘Although the same effect could be achieved with sparkling water.’ I opt for Champagne, keen to get the authentic Floris experience. She sprays the final two scents on the backs of my hands and I smell, deciding on the left one. It’s warm and sunshiny.

‘Now for the fun part — the accords,’ Anna says. ‘This is where we get to characterize your scent even more, giving it even more personality and individuality. I will show you a selection that could potentially work but it’s always going to be led by you.’ We begin again, sniffing our way ever closer to our goal: Eau de Lotte. She shows me one that’s an instant hit. ‘That’s really interesting,’ I say.

‘That’s fig,’ Anna replies. My mother has always loved figs and we have a fig tree at our family home. It can’t be a coincidence. Olfactory is one of the strongest triggers of memory there is. Anna asks me to smell a vial which contains musk. ‘It’s a really interesting one, some people can smell it and some people can't.’ I can, but am indifferent. ‘Do you think you're looking for something a bit more complicated?’ Anna asks. I say yes. She then suggests a smell that I immediately identify as lavender and deem ‘too granny’. Cardamon, however, is an instant hit. It smells tasty, like the feeling of getting a bit drunk at a bougie bar. Anna suddenly, and alarmingly insightfully, observes: ‘I'm starting to notice that you're drawn to fragrances that are a little bit bizarre and weird, but actually the ones that you would wear on yourself are perhaps a little bit more, just calmer.’ It’s starting to feel a bit like therapy. She gets me to sniff my own unscented skin between each scent, so that my nose doesn’t get too confused. Eventually we get there.

She blends the mixture, muttering quietly as she does so about the various quantities of each scent, and spraying it on patches on my arms, hands and wrists so that we can both smell it on me, at various stages during the process. We add a few drops of vanilla, then of smoke, then frankincense and myrrh, and finally cassis for a kick. After several rounds, and when I almost don’t have any arm left to sniff, we are there. She asks me to name my creation. The base is jasmine, and it is heavily imbued with fig. Combined with the fact that making it together felt like a sort of spirited dance, or searching for a missing jigsaw piece, I go for ‘Jig’. It is a punchy, sweet, playful word — exactly how it smells.

It’s a wonderful experience, so it’s no surprise it’s ‘98% gifted’ according to Anna’s estimation. ‘Usually for anniversaries, weddings or birthdays.’ My brain is swimming with things I wish I had asked, and Champagne, and my nose heady with Jig, but I manage to sneak in one final question as Anna is bottling our creation in a classy bottle with a golden lid. I am desperate to know what her signature scent is. Is she woody and earthy? Floral and light? Bizarre — like some of the scents I turned down earlier? Or something else entirely. ‘I haven’t made one,’ she says with a shrug. ‘None of the perfumers have.’

‘Why?’ I implore, utterly baffled by her answer.

‘Because I think we wouldn’t know where to stop.’

An appointment for one at Floris costs £750 and lasts for approximately two hours, or you can opt to go with a loved one for £1,250. This session lasts three hours. For more information visit Floris's website.

Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us, which means there are a lot of people out there shopping for a ring and figuring out how they’re going to pop the question. If this is you, stop for a moment because the solution — at least to the first thing — might be closer to home than you think. Going bespoke is currently the ultimate indulgence in luxury and, as such, jewellers are increasingly receiving requests for one-off designs made with stones, and even gold, from family heirlooms.

The reasons why this is such a good idea are two-fold.

Firstly, using what already exists is the most environmentally-friendly option. While responsibly-mined gold and diamonds do exist, little is better than taking a stone that’s already come out of the ground and re-using it. Secondly, gemstones and jewels hold sentimental value, reminding us of loved ones and larger family connections. Instead of letting these pieces languish at the bottom of a jewellery box, we should be wearing them (and their familial memories) with pride — albeit in a new incarnation.

Of course, today’s engagement rings are a far cry from what was fashionable 60, 30 or even 10 years ago, so couples are using the opportunity to go bespoke to stamp their own contemporary mark on the designs.

Take, for example, the traditional solitaire diamond ring — a single stone secured with prongs that jewellers such as De Beers and Tiffany & Co have championed for decades. It is (or maybe was) the archetypal engagement ring, the ring of our mothers and grandmothers (which perhaps explains the shift away from it). Eliza Walter, the founder of jewellery brand Lylie, recently made the perfect example of a re-imagined solitaire (remodelling from £3,500). Her client presented her with a three-carat diamond ring set in white-and-yellow gold that had once belonged to her grandmother; Eliza re-set it in a chunky wave of yellow gold and used the diamonds on the band of the original piece in a new wedding ring.

These types of sculptural engagement rings are having a ‘moment’, as brides become braver and challenge the longstanding fashion for delicate bands that are often utilised in order to make the diamond look bigger. Now, the band is as much a part of the design as the stones.

When a client approached Cassandra Goad about re-setting a round, brilliant diamond that he’d inherited from his family she worked closely with him to understand his future wife’s style (remodelling from about £2,500). ‘After many conversations, it became clear that she loved chunky yellow gold rings,’ says Cassandra. ‘I reimagined the piece, incorporating the heirloom diamond into a bold wrap-around yellow gold design, with the stone set in a rub-over setting.’

Multi-stone rings are also on the rise, but they’re different from the traditional three-stone ones of yesteryear. Cigar-band rings (the name given to rings with a band that is wide all the way round) are in vogue and offer ample space for multiple, smaller gemstones.

Cassandra worked on a design with a client who wanted to use her mother’s engagement ring as the starting point. The original ring wasn’t her style, but as her mother had sadly died it held enormous sentimental value. The Sloane Street jeweller set all the stones in a wide band and even used the gold from the original ring in the new iteration.

When a groom came to her with three family diamonds, Annoushka Ducas, the founder of Annoushka, set them in a thick, rose gold band alongside two baguette-cut sapphires (remodelling from £10,000). ‘Reimagining a family stone is a beautiful way to carry forward the story of a treasured piece. It honours the past while creating a meaningful heirloom for the future,’ she says. Kind and careful consideration is given to the heirloom gemstones’ shape, clarity and unique characteristics, she goes on to explain. ‘We ensure the new setting celebrates its natural perfections (or wonderful imperfections), while reflecting the style and story of its new owner. It’s a meeting of past and future in one design.’

Serena Ansell recently finished work on a five stone, classic-style ring for a couple who presented her with diamonds from both sides of their respective families (remodelling from about £5,000). ‘I knew the bride-to-be wasn’t shy of chunky jewellery and loved classical pieces. And as I love art history I relished designing this ring that takes inspiration from Ancient Greek and Roman artistry.’

One of the dismantled rings belonged to the client’s grandmother. ‘She was married for over 60 years so to include the diamonds in my ring feels very special,’ said the client to Serena, via email.

Considered design and unique touches are a calling-card of jeweller Hattie Rickards (remodelling from £5,000). Her design process can involve weeks of back and forth in order to better understand her client’s lifestyle and taste. A couple — Bianca and Johnnie — brought Hattie an heirloom, old-cut diamond from Bianca’s mother. ‘Bianca is a homebody often found in jeans and a t-shirt at home in Dalston or barefoot on the beach in Portugal,’ says Hattie. ‘They loved my signature design, but we refined it to create a ring that perfectly suited the shape and scale of Bianca’s hands, and to create a silhouette that would suit her style.’

‘Even though it is undeniably “me”, the fact that Johnnie and I went to Hattie together means that when I look at it I see something that is “ours”, and also I see my mum, thanks to her beautiful stone. For me, that's what truly makes it a modern heirloom,’ says Bianca.

Working on another commission, Hattie set a loose, family diamond in a bold, square setting, which lent the round, brilliant cut stone ‘a distinct and confident modernity’. She added baguette-cut diamonds and an unusual stripe of channel-set, custom-cut green sapphires and even hid the groom’s birthstone on the inside of the shank.

While gemstones are the obvious (and easy) precious material to ‘recycle’, some independent jewellers are also able to re-use gold. Lylie is one of them. ‘We understand the sentimental value of the original gold itself, so we offer a re-casting service using heirloom metal,’ says Eliza. The jeweller also runs a ‘Gold Exchange’ scheme whereby heirloom gold can be offset against part of the remodelling costs and responsibly recycled — perfect if, for example, the original ring is yellow gold and the client wants to use white or platinum in its place. It’s another sustainable way of keeping already-mined material in circulation while reducing the cost of the new commission. From pre-loved to loved once more, re-using gemstones and gold pays in so many ways, turning ‘something old’ into ‘something new’ again.

For Cece Fein-Hughes, what began in a bedroom in her parent’s house ended up on the fingers of Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi and Taylor Swift. ‘We've never experienced anything like it,’ she recalls, of the bespoke order that came in last year for the pop superstar. Swift was introduced to Cece’s jewellery by the supermodel Gigi Hadid, who gifted the singer, and Kendall Jenner, bespoke pieces of jewellery. Swift’s tabby cat, Benjamin Button, was the centerpiece of a signet ring, surrounded by pearls, two brilliant cut diamonds, a flaming heart and a spear-pierced one with the number 87 inside — a reference to her fiance Travis Kelce's jersey number for the Kansas City Chiefs. For Robbie and Elordi, Cece Jewellery was chosen to commemorate the time they spent together filming Emerald Fennell’s new raunchy adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Robbie had matching signet rings made that feature a pair of skeletons embracing, with the words 'Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same’ from the Emily Brontë novel. 'It was such a special request to create these matching rings [...] The skeletons are positioned exactly as they appear on the iconic film poster, entwined with roses and thorns, representing passion, beauty, and heartbreak,' Cece says.

The key to Cece Jewellery’s success may be that the business is a close-knit family affair. ‘My parents run their own construction company, and it’s really helpful to have guidance. My mum’s a designer, so she designs with me, and my dad leads the charge on the business,’ Cece says. In fact, case in point, as I am interviewing Cece in her west London office — ‘I’m a serious west Londoner. I can’t leave,’ she says — her mum pops in, as if on cue. She does this, Cece says, pretty much once a day.

Bubbly, warm and full of passion for her designs, time spent with Cece passes quickly, and with much laughter involved. Growing up, she didn’t imagine that she’d be a designer, but she was very much ‘a jewellery kid’. ‘I was like a little magpie. I'd get anything that was sparkling,’ she says. Her father was a deep sea diver — ‘he has all these old school tattoos, which is very much a theme that runs my designs’ — while her mother stayed at home. Cece has around eight small tattoos herself (she can’t remember exactly how many), of which one is a snake. Despite a genuine fear of the reptile, she is ‘obsessed with them’ and they feature a lot in her jewellery, though she’d ‘never be in a room with’ one. This kind of contradiction features a lot in her work — her seemingly girlish pieces tend to have a rather Gothic twist. For as many floral Cece Jewellery designs there are, they are an equally prevalent number that feature something more macabre. Many of her heart designs are bleeding, or pierced by an arrow. Plenty feature skeletons, perhaps reflecting Cece's own tattoo of a skull and crossbones: ‘It’s a good reminder that we’re all going to die,’ she says, with a light-hearted giggle.

She describes her upbringing as ‘hippie and wild’. ‘There were no rules. I actually asked my parents to have rules. I was like: ‘Dad, can you tell us to take our shoes off?’ Because my school friends did that.’ She grew up in Devon with an older brother and a younger sister. ‘It was all very whimsical and witchy. My mum and my granny went to Full Moon meetings. It was this very earthy upbringing. They were also creative and always encouraged me to draw and paint and walk on the moors and look at spider webs and stuff, so that sort of fueled my passion for creativity.’

Her business, despite ‘moving to London and bringing in a bit of the bling’ aims to capture the whimsy of her upbringing. Originally, she studied History of Art at university then completed internships at Christie’s and Sotheby's, before realising that she hated working at a desk. ‘I was itching to do something with my hands, so I did a short jewellery making course in Hatton Garden, completely randomly, and I discovered gold — and how magical it was.’

‘I didn't ever think I'd have a business,’ Cece says, candidly. ‘I didn't think I'd ever have a job. I was happy just to make a few little rings here and there. My deep passion is in design. When I design for a new collection, that's when I'm happiest.’

It is the enamel on her rings that makes them unique. Cece had studied the jewellery craft for a while before she came across enamel. ‘It was sort of — and I hate this term — a “eureka” moment, because it pulls in my love of history of art, which is paintings, but also my love of storytelling, and this kind of fairytale element you can wear.’

She has a particular love of the signet ring: ‘It’s brilliant because it's so British. It definitely has connotations of Eton, but I kind of love flipping that on its head a bit — wearing it on a different finger, stacking it up, painting crazy things on the signet ring. We've done paintings that are so un-proper, for lack of a better word.’ She describes her designs as ‘playful, fun and silly,’ complete with images that ‘makes you look twice’. Cece recently painted a bespoke ring where the customer had dreamt that they were a lion and had defeated an alligator in a battle to the death. ‘They said they needed it painted on a ring because it means something,’ she recalls.

‘Was this customer a man?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ Cece says.

All this discussion of rings leads me to my most burning question for the married jewellery designer — the answer to which has, up until this point, been obscured by an inconsiderately clutched cup of tea. What kind of wedding ring does a ring designer wear? The answer is: more than one. She has three separate pieces on her ring finger. Dan, her husband, gifted her the first — her engagement ring — she made herself the second (‘because I really wanted more diamonds’) and the third is a simple wedding band. ‘I wanted something quite simple for us to exchange on the day, because I think there's something symbolic to that.’ Her husband wasn’t stressed when it came to choosing her engagement ring because he had been thoroughly briefed by Cece in the 10 years prior, she says. He also wanted to choose entirely by himself. She met him in the universal place where many great romances begin: on a dance floor while on a university night out.

The pair are a power duo: Dan also runs his own business in tech. ‘It's a really confusing world, and it's the complete opposite world that I work in,’ Cece says. He is not a natural jewellery wearer, but the designer won him around with a bespoke signet ring, featuring an illustration of a crane on one leg to symbolise balance. She was, he says, her ‘most difficult customer’. They share a ‘bossy and princess-y’ tabby cat called Lucky.

While there is plenty of joy at Cece Jewellery HQ, the increase in the price of gold recently has hit her business hard. ‘It’s really stressful. My finance team is not having a good time,’ she says. ‘We are going to increase our prices soon. We have to. It's crazy how much gold has gone up even in the last couple of months. It's really, really upsetting because it just suddenly cuts out a whole market of people for fine jewellery, but there's also nothing we can do because we are selling rings — we have to make a profit.’ So, would she ever switch to a different material? She bristles as that thought.

‘No. I can’t. I have to have the best of the best, because it would be doing enamel a disservice to use any lower carat gold or synthetic diamonds. It's such an ancient, beautiful craft that takes so many years of learning how to do it, and so few people in the world know how to do it. It's like treasured art, so we need to make sure it's on the best canvas.’

Your aesthetic hero

There’s this one scene in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, and it’s where Claire Danes [Juliet] is looking through the fish tank, and the song ‘I’m Kissing You’ [by Des'ree] is playing. That’s my aesthetic hero. I think there's something so innocent and ethereal and magical about that scene and what she's wearing, but there's also an undertone of tragedy, which I love. I've been playing that scene over and over again for the last couple of months. I used that scene as my inspiration for our next collection.

A book you found inspiring

I wanted to say something really smart, but I’m actually going to say the truth. I was addicted to Romantasy for a whole year. I have almost a graveyard of Romantasy books in my house, and it’s got to be Fourth Wing [by Rebecca Yarros]. It’s not educational, but it is such delicious escapism, and I’m all about escapism and storytelling. I actually couldn’t talk to my husband for a whole weekend [because I was reading it].

The music you work to

I listen to really depressing music. I have to feel heartbroken and sad. And at the moment, it's classical, but kind of sad-classical. It ebbs and flows, I just have to transport myself back to Devon, and that's the way I do it. You have to light the candles, you need a nice, peaceful space.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

So I've obviously been to the Marie Antoinette one that's been huge, and the Cartier one [both recently at the V&A Museum], and I can’t decide between the two… I'd probably have to say Cartier, just because seeing the journey of Cartier from start to finish, and ending with the tiaras — it was just the most incredible old glamour, and it felt so inspiring.

What you’d take to a desert island

Obviously my husband and my cat, but mainly my mum, because I’m such a baby, and I think I’m getting more of a baby as I get older, really. I need my mum. I think I call her about five times a day and I see her every day, as long as she comes into the office (she lives around the corner). But yeah, I need my mum, always.

The last podcast you listened to

I’m actually not a podcast girl so, none. I don’t really commute so I don’t really have time to listen to podcasts — it’s a 10-minute walk.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

Lucky, my cat, and just a coffee in bed, I can’t do anything else until I’ve had that. I have black coffee, but the cup has to be three quarters full, and I take it with sugar.

The items you collect

I do have a collection of crystals, which is definitely a nod to my granny. I have one my brother gave me for something to do with health, because once I was really ill, and I feel like that's the sweetest thing ever, because he's a big rock-and-roll dude with a bald head and loads of tattoos. It was so sweet. I've also got one that me and Dan got in Sri Lanka. I've got crystals from all over the world. It’s a meaningful little shrine of crystals.

The last thing of note that you bought for yourself

I am making a plate wall at my house at the moment. I’ve bought these Astier De Villatte plates, which are extremely expensive and which you would never use as they’re so smashable — but they have paintings on them. One has a crow, another has a rose. It’s quite eccentric and it’s for my new kitchen. I’m really excited to put it all up, I just don’t know how.

A hotel you could go back and back to

Grand Hotel Son Net in Mallorca. We went last year and it’s one of those hotels where you don’t leave until you go to your returning flight, and because we both run our own businesses, sometimes we need a holiday where you literally don't do anything. It was actually heaven.

Your favourite painting

I feel like with this one, I thought about it, and it has to be this. I’m not trying to bring in all my jewellery collections, but it's just what I think about. It's The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, because our last collection was inspired by that painting. Obviously it's a big triptych, and we created triptych pendants. I just love paintings where the closer you look, the more you discover. The allegory of, like: ‘Oh, that looks beautiful,’ and then you look closer, and it's like a skull or something dying.

The most memorable meal you've eaten

Le Vin Perdu, in Ashburton, Devon. We went over Christmas, and we were all amazed at how delicious it was. It's such a cute little glittery, candle-lit restaurant. We actually did our wedding drinks the night before there, and it was a set menu, and literally, every single plate was left empty. And it was great and we were all really happy. It was delicious Italian.

Who would play you in a film of your life

This is really hard. I actually can’t answer — you guys can. [The rest of us in the room agree she looks quite a lot like Dua Lipa, who has acted twice, a.) not very well, in the comedy film Argylle which is about a spy and a cat, and b.) slightly better in the film Barbie.]

The best present you’ve ever received

It’s a really obvious one, but when Dan proposed I literally screamed. I was so happy. It was a shocking surprise because I thought maybe it wasn’t going to happen. It was very much that time when everyone's maybe getting engaged, maybe not, and everyone’s a bit panicky and stressed.

A possession you'd never sell

A pendant that I made for my aunties, uncles and me. It's where we scattered my granny's ashes in Devon, we have this very special tor on Dartmoor — it's basically a hill with a pile of rocks on top — and it was almost like our family's pilgrimage. We'd go up it multiple times a year, and that's where we scattered her ashes and then laid down little pink blossoms. So I painted in enamel the little rock, a little pink blossom, and then it's got her initials on the back, which is very sweet. Because we don't have a tombstone, it's very untraditional. We didn't even have a funeral. So it's nice to have something that we have from that moment.

Find out more about Cece Jewellery on their website.

My father had a party-prep ritual. When there was a hard-card event to attend or black tie to wear, Dad would go to the bathroom first, shaving and showering and primping before attending to his freshly pressed shirt and tricky gold cufflinks. As my mother busied herself with Clairol hot roller curlers and industrial blasts of Elnett, her mink coat unsheathed from its dust cover, Dad would make his way downstairs in what I came to know as his ‘pre-party pants’ — an ensemble that actually involved no trousers at all.

Dad’s hair was brilliantined and his chin cleanly shaved (perhaps with a corner of loo roll mopping up the blood from a wayward Wilkinson Sword nick). His shirt would be buttoned up and his tie knotted small, tight and perfectly. Cufflinks in place, Omega watch on. Over the top of all this, a silk Tootal dressing gown, rakishly tied at the waist. With his suit pants still enjoying a hot crease in the electric Corby press, his legs would be bare but for a pair of black, calf length socks.

On his feet? The most immaculate pair of house slippers available to man. Church’s. Tan leather heel and sole. Mandarin red oxblood uppers. Cut in from a Moroccan block. Buttery soft and worn-in just so, their back quarters high on his ankle, effecting the overall look a slightly effeminate, dainty and camp air, à la Noël Coward in Jamaica.

This was how Dad dressed to fix himself a secret pre-party sharpener — a Gordon’s gin and tonic, ice and a slice — and he’d sit in front of the television, tumbler in hand, elegant slippers on, sans pants, waiting for his wife to descend, enjoying a bit of peace before the noisy socials began.

It turns out my father and his transitional footwear were trendsetters. Several decades on, the evening slipper seems to be having its time again. Not only for parties and black-tie events, but for daywear and work; the dance floor, but also the pavement and parlour.

The most coveted models are acquired on holiday — the super-chic extra-baggage booty shipped back from a visit to India, Morocco, Italy, Spain or France. Countries and cultures have their own variants; the cotton-upper and sisal-soled espadrille on the Côte d’Azur, as worn by Picasso and Yves Saint Laurent, itself descended from the original Catalàn and Basque peasant staple, espardenya (literally ‘sparto grass’, a nod to the material used for the sole), from about 2000BC. These Euro-basics were themselves influenced by the cotton or woven rush Chinese Xiuhuaxie or Buxie slippers, which date from 4700BC.

Go to Tangier or Marrakech for a long weekend and it is de rigueur to come home with a pair of orange or pink leather Babouche slippers (at a keenly haggled £10 or £20 in the Essaouira souk, where Mick and Keith got their Babouches back in the 1960s, quite a bit cheaper than Church’s). A visit to Delhi or Mumbai requires the purchase of Indian slippers in the Mojari, Khussa or Jutti style.

Right now, the world’s slip-on capital is Venice, where the traditional Gondolier’s Furlane scarpet, water-born in the 19th century, is having another fashion moment on terra firma. Invented for land-lubbers, the humble Furlane shoe (or friulane or even papusse) was actually the creation of crafts-people in the Friuli region of north-east Italy.

The rubber-soled shoe (material recycled from old car and bicycle tyres) was handmade in velvet and distinguished by a pointy vamp detail adopted by Venetian canal workers during the Second World War. Cheap, sciccoso and slip-resistant whatever the surface (ebony wooden deck or wet cobbled streets), the Furlane slipper has now found its way onto the feet of the style mavens. Back in 2017, Kate Moss swapped her beloved ballet flats for scarlet Furlanes from the ViBi Venezia store owned by the Arrivabene sisters, Viola and Vera of the grand Palazzo Papadopoli in Venice. The boutique, founded in 2015, makes collections inspired by the founders’ blue-blooded mother, Countess Bianca di Savoia Aosta Arrivabene, who had been buying the traditional slippers on the city’s famous Rialto Bridge for decades.

Fellow Italophiles George Clooney, Alexa Chung and Tom Ford have caught on to the trend: Venice is now a slipper shoppers’ paradise, with makers such as Scarosso, Piedàterre Venezia (‘the original Venetian slippers since 1952’) and RivoAltus offering their own multicoloured takes on the gondoliers’ classic. At the Venice wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez in June, male guests, including Orlando Bloom, Theo James and Leonardo DiCaprio, wore blue velvet ViBi Venezia scarpet, as the mostly high-heeled ladies — Kim Kardashian, Sydney Sweeney and Oprah Winfrey, all arguably in greater need of ship-to-shore stability — were short changed and possibly imperilled by knock-off versions from the Amazon site.

Last summer, the city slipper came to Britain, too. The Furlane, sometimes styled with a Mary Jane strap, is now a dinner-jacket and pavilion staple all over the country. Perhaps a reaction to clompy, clod-hopping seasons of chunky, unflattering footwear — and too many summers of open-toed, Hobbity, corpus unguis-exposing Birkenstocks and city flip-flops — the Furlane is an elegant, adaptable alternative.

Of course, the Brits — particularly, cigar-smoking, hard-carding males — have been slouching their way around big tents and ballrooms in velvet slippers for ages, often with gold embroidery on each toe. Yet the apparel category itself has much less highfalutin’ associations.

The English word slippers occurs from about 1478, its first recorded use appearing in a translation of the Fardle of facions conteining the aunciente maners, customes and lawes, of the peoples enhabiting the two partes of the earth, called Affricke and Asie by the 16th-century German humanist Johann Boemus. A key chapter titled ‘Of Turcquie, and of the maners, Lawes, and Ordenaunces of the Turcques’ contains this prescriptive statement of etiquette. ‘House, or Churche, or any other place wher they entende to sitte, no man entreth with his shoes on. For it is compted a very dishonest and an vnmanerly facion, to sitte shoed. Wherfore they vse a maner of slippe shooes, that may lightly be putte of and on.’

In King Lear, Shakespeare muddied the manners by suggesting that going ‘slipshod’ was most suitable for persons with ‘kibes’ (chilblains). Eventually, however, it was probably a particular style of jacket that begat (and gentrified) the slip-on shoe in blazing Blighty.

Designed in the 1850s, in the style of a short robe de chambre, the traditional smoking jacket, in velvet or silk, has a shawl collar, sports turn-up cuffs and is closed with militaristic frogging fastenings or a tie belt, the garment’s specific intention being male and lounge-centric—men tugging on clay pipes or cheroots. Diarist Samuel Pepys was an early adopter, writing in 1666 ‘and so to Hale’s and there sat until almost quite dark upon working my gowne, which I hired to be drawn (in) it—an Indian gown, and I do see all the reason to expect a most excellent picture of it’. The velvet gown needed an appropriately relaxed shoe to match—sturdy, bulky footwear being too stiff for prolonged inhalation sessions. This was still a concern more than a century on. Thus, the velvet slipper, made by needlepointers and influenced by what was then a fashion for Orientalism, was born under Queen Victoria. Her consort, Prince Albert, commissioned the items to be worn around the Royal Household and a new formalwear accessory category, ‘the Prince Albert slipper’, was created. A century later, a generation of Sloane Rangers would follow in the Prince’s soft footsteps.

Jeremy Hackett, co-founder of the eponymous menswear outfitters, recalls his store’s 1980s origins as a pair of secondhand-clothes shops in Covent Garden and on the New King’s Road. The store in Neal Street, WC2, sold vintage footwear by British makers such as Wildsmith, George Cleverly and Lobb. ‘Our shop was opposite a famous punk club called The Roxy,’ Jeremy recalls. ‘Before the Sloanes caught on to them, punk rockers — then mutating into New Romantics — would come in searching for velvet slippers like ones they’d seen worn by Cecil Beaton and Oscar Wilde in old photographs. We sold literally hundreds of pairs.’ Artist David Hockney (now a Crocs devotee) bought Hackett corduroy slippers in several colours. ‘He wore them in his studio, for painting in.’

These days, Jeremy is a velvet-slipper guy himself, adopting the soft footwear for black-tie occasions — as The Prince of Wales did at the royal premiere of Top Gun: Maverick. Himself an RAF ‘top gun’ pilot, The Prince wore custom Crockett & Jones numbers embroidered with F-18 fighter jets. Still, Jeremy caveats the look with some rules. ‘They look best with a double-breasted dinner jacket,’ he advises, ‘although a tartan jacket goes well with a slipper, too.’ At a push, the designer will allow a jeans-and-Furlane combo, ‘but always with socks’. ‘A nicely turned, slender ankle and a pair of velvet slippers calls for decent hosiery,’ he insists. ‘Black tie and bare ankles is just wrong.

‘Monogramming the toes with skull and crossbones is,’ he warns, ‘also a bit of a pose.’ You can order British-made day slippers bespoke at Hackett’s tailor, at No 14, Savile Row, W1, or off the peg at Tricker’s, Edward Green or New & Lingwood, all on Jermyn Street, SW1.

Chelsea and Mayfair leather man Trevor Pickett has added his own, Prince Albert-shaped iteration of the slipper, each one made out of kilim weave, no two pairs the same. ‘Slipshod’ is no longer a dirty word.

Tartan — a rich fabric with an even richer Scottish history. Think of the humble kilt, and potentially what may be lurking underneath. Consider the contents of the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, or the familiar sight of a traditionally-dressed bagpipe player entertaining tourists on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Contemplate David Tennant and Gerard Butler in formal dress (I often do). What you might not think of is the picturesque island just off the coast of Massachusetts — Nantucket, USA.

Perhaps you should. This island has now joined Scrooge McDuck, Hello Kitty and an Elvis Presley tribute act in having its own unique tartan listed on the Scottish Register of Tartans. On this Burns Night, what would the esteemed poet think of Scotland’s rich cultural legacy and its influence on the wider world?

‘I wanted to find a way to take the history of Nantucket and sort of codify it and I thought something like a tartan was really interesting because obviously the design has so many symbolic elements that can represent the island,’ says Annie Davidson Watson, founder of Nantucket-based luxury goods brand Steplane. ‘I wanted to have something that had some sort of permanence and was globally recognised; it will be preserved in their archives for life now.’ The tartan — a navy blue, brown, red and grey — is featured on a lambswool throw ($249) and is woven by an independent mill in the Scottish borders.

The design is inspired by the history of Nantucket and its culture, with brown intended to represent the land, echoing Nantucket’s Wampanoag name ‘the faraway land’; blue for the island’s ocean surroundings and maritime history; grey for fog, sea salt and the island’s nickname ‘The Little Grey Lady of the Sea’; and red for the cranberry bogs essential to the Wampanoag diet and the island’s historic red-brick architecture.

‘Also Nantucket has a really rich whaling history,’ says Annie, whose family boasts Scottish heritage. ‘Whaling captains would travel the world and bring home objects from some of the finest makers in the world. So, even though it might seem random, having something from Scotland associated with Nantucket was, I thought, an interesting way to play with that global aspect of the island’s history.’

The pattern of the tartan also pays homage to the Barclay Clan’s tartan design, honouring Robert Barclay, a Scottish Quaker who testified to Parliament in 1774 about the importance of Nantucket’s whale oil to the British Empire. Annie discovered the connection when scouring the island's archives.

It made me wonder. If Nantucket (and Scrooge McDuck and Hello Kitty) has an official tartan, who else does? What’s the process of registering a new design, and where does tartan even come from?

A brief chequered history

Although the oldest tartan-patterned cloth discovered was on the edge of China, it plays a starring role in the national dress of Scotland, and tartan was first described in the country in the 16th century. The Scottish historian John Mair described the ‘over-garment’ of Highlanders in 1521 as being made up of a ‘loose plaid’ over a ‘shift saffron dyed’, under which ‘from the mid-leg to the foot the men of the high land go uncovered’. It was not only adopted by the Highlanders, but is traditionally associated with Highland dress and may have been avoided by some Lowlanders who regarded them as rather uncouth, to put it mildly.

In 1538, however, tartan fell into royal favour. James V ordered a tartan hunting outfit and the fabric proved popular for riding and led to a fashion for tartan trews, which still exists today as a (much less risky on a windy day) alternative to the kilt. It was worn by all in Gaelic society, but red was the prized colour as it was a more expensive dye, thus more likely to be worn by the wealthy. Tartan became a symbol of Jacobitism and, after 1707, a symbol of opposition to the union of the Scottish and English parliaments.

It had largely gone out of vogue among the wealthy by the late 18th century, but was still in use by The Black Watch army regiment in 1739, who were kilted up to police the Highlands, and by subsequent regiments. A common myth about tartan is that after the Battle of Culloden, in 1746, the British government passed an act that forbade its wearing in the Highlands, in an attempt to suppress the rebellious nature of many Scottish clans. This isn’t strictly true. It was Highland clothes that were banned for men and boys — and this is how must people utilized tartan at the time. This was repealed in 1782, after which the Highland revival began. This ran until about 1840, and it’s remained popular ever since.

Today we know of the formalised clan tartans, based on regional differences, and used as a badge of identity. These began as a concept in 1815. ‘There were two significant contributors to this in the 19th century,’ says Peter MacDonald, tartan historian and honorary head of research for the Scottish Tartans Authority. ‘One was George V’s visit in 1822, orchestrated by Sir Walter Scott, who urged everyone to turn up wearing their true tartan to see the King, and then the other thing was obviously Queen Victoria buying Balmoral, falling in love with Scotland and promoting Scotland widely.’

In the present, tartan brings more modern forms of clan — it is the pattern that identifies individual schools via uniforms, as an example. The popular nickname for Scottish football supporters (The Tartan Army) also nods towards a sense of community, as does the use of tartan in the punk movement, perhaps a reference back to the Highlander’s rebellious reputation. Tartan is also widely used in the fashion of Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and, of course, the instantly recognisable Burberry check, introduced in the 1920s to line the inside of the fashion brand’s iconic trench coats.

Everything else you need to know about tartan including how it’s made and registered

The structure of tartan is actually the same as denim, which is the strongest structure for cloth. Each particular tartan’s pattern is known as a sett. This is made up of a series of lines of different colours and width. The threads that run vertically are referred to as the warp in the cloth, and those that run horizontally are called the weft. Tartan is normally made from dyed wool yarns that are woven on a loom.

New tartans today do not require registration in the Scottish Register of Tartans, which was established by an act of the Scottish Parliament in November, 2008, but many people choose to do so. ‘It doesn't have to be, but people choose to, because it gives them a shop window, in the broader sense, and also it affords some degree of protection with a small ‘p’, insofar as once it's in the public domain, if someone else came along and did something similar, you've got the back reference point [to your design],’ says Peter, who also serves on the panel of the Scottish Register of Tartans that approves new design. The first tartan to be registered with them was, hilariously, none other than the Scottish Register of Tartans’ tartan. This is one of the only instances where the word ‘tartan’ can be used in a tartan’s name. You could only otherwise include the word ‘if you had a company, or something like that, with the word “tartan” in it that was unique, or if you were called something like “Mr and Mrs Tartan,” Peter explains.

To register a new tartan, one must possess a unique design that passes the ‘across the room’ test. ‘If it looks too similar to another then it is likely to be confused,’ Peter says. You must also provide a threadcoat for said design, along with an image, proposed name and fee of £150. Colours involved do not have to have a significance, but they often do. ‘Historically, there would have never been a rationale there as part of the registration process. Today, there's a box that says: “explain the colors”, in which one could simply put: “colours of personal significance”, but some people then seem to think they have to justify the colours,’ Peter says. ‘There is no requirement. There is also no standardised meaning for each individual colour.’

Additionally, according to the register: ‘There must be a clear link between the person registering the tartan and the proposed tartan name.’ The name must be no more than 200 characters in length and must not be used as a means of promoting political ideology. American spellings are generally Anglicised. There are a lot more stipulations, but they are fiddly and only worth explaining if you, dear reader, intend to register a tartan.

Among the weirder officially registered tartan names are Auld Magic of Unicorn (colours: white, gold, green, blue), Bargain Booze (black, grey), Bevy of Pheasants (brown, yellow, red, black, white) and Boring and Dull (red, blue, white). There must, of course, be many weird entries further down the alphabet, but the register has over 10,000 tartans, so forgive me for not venturing further.

The most popular tartans today include the Royal Stewart and Black Watch tartan. The latter likely owes its cult status to tradition, which stated that anybody without a tartan of their own may wear it. It is also known as The Universal or Government tartan and continues to be worn by the Royal Regiment of Scotland today (The Princess of Wales is also a fan — in Scotland she is known instead as the Duchess of Rothesay). The King wears the following tartans: Prince Charles Edward Stewart; Stewart Hunting; Balmoral; Duke of Rothesay and Lord of the Isles; Gordon Highlanders; Black Watch; and The King Charles III, which was designed by Peter. He also wove the material for Prince Harry and Prince William’s first kilts, when they were children (Peter that is, not the King.)

Unsurprisingly, with tartan registration came more and more people and producers who wished to register. Royal fabrics now sit on the list among those belonging to IrnBru and Hello Kitty (see below for more surprising additions). It is a practice that snowballed until it reached as far away as Nantucket. So what does Peter think about it? Is the magic of the tradition of tartan getting lost in this new modern wave? ‘There will always be new ones,’ Peter says. ‘And within all of these there is also that traditional bit that we're trying to preserve and protect, and I think that's really important — to make sure that many of the older traditional, authentic patterns are not lost to history.’ He adds: ‘Anything that keeps the weaving trade and the dying trade and all the other related trades alive and produced in Scotland can only be a good thing.’

Britain dazzles in the rain — words you probably weren’t expecting to read today. But it does. Far more so than any other country in the world. The form of precipitation is often understood as a defining feature of British culture — and this much is correct, but the manner in which we speak about it (negatively) is all wrong. People always talk about the fleeting beauty of tropical rainstorms, but the quiet patter of the all-day sort of rain that we’re more acquainted with in this country forces us to slow down and into periods of, often, much-needed introspection. It is also rather important: sustaining our famously lush landscapes, agriculture and vital freshwater supplies.

The key to surviving the rain — nay, thriving in it — is a) to have the right attitude (keep calm and carry on whatever the weather) and b) wear the right gear. And we have form in both. Afterall, Britons invented the trench coat and the waxed jacket. One brand has played a bigger part in all of this than the rest. Burberry — whose founder, Thomas Burberry invented gabardine fabric in 1879. The rain- and weather-resistant durable twill-worsted wool has been worn by everyone from Antarctic explorers (Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton) to London commuters, and is now being celebrated by the brand with a new collection.

The Gabardine Capsule comprises shearling collar jackets, long-length trench coats and shorter car coats, reversible bucket hats and, even, cargo trousers — all made out of the revolutionary fabric. The most imaginative reimagining of a classic Burberry product is the bomber jacket, updated in quilted, cotton-nylon gabardine.

Though inspired by the countryside — all of the products in the collection have been finished with a specially-designed label inspired by a 1993 campaign: ‘Burberrys grew out of country life’ (we approve, obviously) — they could easily be worn in more urban environments. The gabardine trench midi skirt, available in three heritage colours wouldn’t look out of place in the office.

London — like its green surroundings — suits the rain, unlike most other major cities. Paris looks like a drab little stage set as soon as the clouds turn a threatening shade of grey. New York is made up of so much concrete that falling rainwater has nowhere to go and puddles around peoples’ ankles. Life in Sydney, Los Angeles and Seville comes to a complete halt when it rains — much like it does here when it snows or a leaf falls onto a train track. Imagine if Londoners refused to venture out of our homes every time the heavens decided to open. It’s not unusual to see people emerge from offices, shops and restaurants to unexpected rainfall, look upwards, shrug and step out onto the street.

The capital’s buildings are made out of a range of materials (traditional Portland stone, granite, concrete, cast iron and aluminium), but most of them have grey undertones. It all pairs well with a thunderous sky which reduces the visual contrast between objects and makes the surroundings look monochromatic. After all, everyone knows that tonal dressing is a shortcut to looking chic (compare to the South of France’s ochre-colour buildings, which simply look dirty underneath overcast skies). Perhaps that’s why the Gabardine Capsule is presented in a short series of muted, heritage colours such as beige and a green described as ‘juniper’.

To mark the launch of the collection and 170 years of the Burberry brand, a film starring Jesse Grylls — son of Bear — and fellow explorers Connaire Cann and Marlon Patrice has been released. Shot in Snowdonia, Wales, it’s the perfect visual reminder of why our unpredictable weather is something we stop moaning about and, instead, revel in.

Burberry’s Gabardine Capsule collection is available to shop online and in-store now.

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Monk shoes were — shock, horror — worn by European monks in the Middle Ages; close-toe alternatives to their traditional sandals, designed to help them better traverse rough terrain and conduct manual labour.

They have a similar silhouette to an Oxford shoe, but instead of laces, they have a thick strap and buckle fastening. They sit between an Oxford and a Derby on the spectrum of smartness; a single-buckle monk shoe in polished black leather is the most formal version because of its streamlined look. Ones with a toe cap or broguing are more informal.

During the 17th century, members of the French aristocracy adopted the monk shoe, appreciating them for their comfort. They were made from high-quality, fine materials such as leather and velvet, in rich colours and with ornate buckle detailing. But what of their rise to fame in Britain? Shoemaker Edward Green helped to popularise the style among British gentleman when he added single and double buckle monk strap styles to his roster in the late 19th century. Handcrafted in leather, Green made the shoes look sleek and stylish. Several decades later, the style was increasingly viewed as a fashionable alternative to Oxfords — helped along by the fact that they were worn by Hollywood stars such as Clark Gable and Cary Grant.

In the 1940s, English shoemaker John Lobb introduced the now iconic ‘William’, a double buckle style initially designed as a sports shoe for weekend wear. They were ‘definitely not to be worn with suit’, according to the brand, but ‘times have changed’ and they now happily recommended it as a business-approrpriate style.

Of course, it wasn’t all plain sailing. In the mid 20th century, monk strap shoes fell out of favour until the 1980s — and were replaced in people's affections by loafers and trainers. Their resurgence, buoyed by fashion-conscious youth, coincided with the release of Crockett & Jones’s ‘ready-to-wear’ monk strap shoe, in partnership with a Parisian retailer looking for a maker that balanced quality and affordability.

The shoe’s popularity flourished enough to make it an icon and they garnered significant attention when Daniel Craig’s James Bond wore them not once, but twice — in Skyfall (2012) in Crockett & Jones’s Monkton shoe in black calf leather, and in Spectre (2015) in the Camberley, a double-buckle boot version.

Though undoubtedly versatile, a double strap monk shoe can only go so far up the ladder of smartness, so if you find yourself in evening attire more often than not, a single strap is the way to go. If you really want to make somebody look twice, Burberry’s snakeskin, chunky heeled monk strap shoes, created in the 1930s and now residing in the Northampton Museum and Gallery, might be your best bet. Sadly, they’re not for sale — so you’ll have to plan your own Louvre-style heist.

Harris Tweed, Donegal Tweed — whatever your preference, the textured fabric has stood the test of time, and has never been more fashionable. One need only look to Claudia Winkleman’s Poirot-goes-punk looks on the ever popular BBC TV show The Traitors for proof of that. It comes as Tweed manufacturer Lovat Mill, renowned for its vibrant colour-mixed yarns, has launched a new collection to celebrate 200 years since the warm, woven woollen fabric that is de rigueur for many countryside activities was given its name by accident. The cloth was originally called ‘tweel’ (which is Scots for twill: a weaving pattern). Reputedly, in 1826, a London tradesman misread a label for Hawick tweed thinking it to be a trade name taken from the River Tweed in Scotland, and so ‘tweed’ was born in Scottish Borders’ textile mills.

Lovat Mill is the sole survivor of those mills and even it stared into the abyss in 1999, before it was rescued by textile experts Alan Cumming and Stephen Rendle, who went on to turn around its fortunes to the extent that its fabric now finds favour with royalty, celebrities and global fashion houses. Taylor Swift wore a Thom Browne skirt made from Lovat Mill tweed in New York last year and Sir David Beckham has also worn their fabrics. So too has Madonna — Lovat Mill created a stretch tweed for the popstar that film director Guy Ritchie, her ex-husband, still wears today.

The rough woollen fabric, known for its ability to withstand harsh weather conditions due to its moisture-resistant properties, was also beloved by Toad of Toad Hall, in Kenneth Grahame’s popular children’s book The Wind in the Willows. Perhaps this is where The Princess of Wales took her style inspiration from for her recent birthday video, in which she dons a tweed cap. She is not the only royal to favour the fabric, The King is also a fan of the brand, who created two exclusive tweeds specifically for him — one of which is called the Dumfired House Tweed, and which can only be worn by the Monarch.

But it was Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel that really shot tweed to fashion stardom in the early 20th century. Originally constructed out of tweed (nowadays they’re made out of multiple materials, some still tweed), suits are a staple of the Chanel brand and still incredibly popular today. They have been worn by everyone from Diana, Princess of Wales, to Rihanna. More recently, Jonathan Anderson’s debut collection with Dior also featured Donegal tweed blazers and tweed coats. Since the creative director hails from Northern Ireland, which borders Donegal, perhaps this is no surprise, but it definitely proves that the fabric is still very much in fashion. The country clothing brand Schöffel has also been known for championing the material in their collections and Dolce & Gabbana often orders tweed from Lovat Mill — as does Dries Van Noten.

The mill’s new collection consists of 17 fabrics, many inspired by the patterns in the 15 Victorian notebooks that were rediscovered, in an attic, at the time of the 1999 takeover. ‘We opened those books and realised we were sitting on a goldmine, the very DNA of Scottish tweed,’ says Alan. ‘Hundreds of designs, all handwritten, all still usable. It was like the mill tapping us on the shoulder and saying: “Well? What are you going to do with this?”’ As designer Ruth Duff states: ‘You go back to go forward.’

This feature originally appeared in the January 7, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

It all began with a troublesome tassel.

In the late 18th century, British Army officers wore boots called ‘Hessians’, a knee-high style with a curved top like a riding boot, made of highly polished calfskin and decorated with a tassel.

Soldiers stationed in warmer climates began replacing their woollen breeches with lightweight linen trousers — however the tighter trouser style failed to work with the tassel. In the early 1800s, Arthur Wellesley, the then Viscount Wellington, was so disgruntled by the situation that he wrote to his shoemaker, George Hoby of St James’s Street, requesting something more suitable. ‘He wanted an English boot that could stand proud anywhere in the world,’ says Adam Edwards in A Short History of the Wellington Boot (2006).

Hoby’s adjustments included: removing the tassel, shortening the boot and waxing the leather to make it more weatherproof. The result was a slimline boot that could be worn in battle, while riding and in the evening, at informal occasions. It was the everyday boot that the Viscount needed, and, given his increasing fame as a war hero and a fashionable man, a style that British gentlemen soon coveted. The boots were nicknamed ‘Wellingtons’.

Queen Victoria was seemingly intrigued by the Viscount’s new footwear. ‘People call them Wellingtons, ma’am,’ he told her. ‘How absurd!’ she replied, before going on to say: ‘Where, I should like to know, would one find a pair of Wellingtons?’

The boots quickly became a symbol of patriotism and pride. Until, that is, the now Duke became Prime Minister in 1828 and political cartoonists parodied his boots and prominent nose in their drawings. By 1830, he’d been reduced to a Wellington boot with a head.

In 1856, American entrepreneurs Henry Lee Norris and Spencer Thomas Parmelee landed in Scotland and established the North British Rubber Company (now Hunter Boot Ltd.). The Company manufactured rubber goods using Charles Goodyear’s vulcanised material and their existing ‘gum’ boots adopted the name ‘Wellington’.

When the First World War broke out, the company was commissioned to produce more than one million pairs of Wellingtons as standard winter kit for ordinary soldiers. At the end of the War, soldiers brought them home to wear on farms, in the garden and on muddy walks. The extremely practical footwear soon found its footing in working industries, steel toe-capped versions appeared soon after.

Le Chameau has been crafting Wellingtons since 1927. They were the first master bootmaker to use a zipper on a rubber boot, and are the only brand to produce rubber boots constructed by one Mastre Bottier. At least nine months of training is required before a Mastre is entrusted with crafting their first pair of boots.

Some of you might associate Wellington boots with Paddington Bear, others with welly wanging championships held throughout the countryside — and some with supermodel Kate Moss, traipsing the fields of Glastonbury. I, however, picture the Autumn-Winter 2020 runway shows: Miuccia Prada sent candy-coloured wellies down the catwalk and Donatella Versace paired tailored dresses with slick patent black boots. A true multi-functional hero with international appeal.

These boots were made for walking

In 1982, The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook by Ann Barr and Peter York laid out the rules for navigating upper-class society. ‘Live in the country (or, failing that, Kensington Square)’, ‘read Dick Francis’ and pass the port clockwise at dinner parties. ‘It’s not just a rule, it’s traffic sense,’ explains the handbook. However, at the very top of the list is a simple sartorial command: ‘Wear navy’.

‘The importance of navy blue goes right through the wardrobe. It always looks right,’ the guide opines. ‘It is discreet, safe, [and] grown-up.’ I have to agree. I still wear a navy Guernsey jumper that belonged to my father in the 1970s. It now has moth holes, but is somehow still smart.

Navy is a colour that takes itself seriously and sends out important signals about status and rank. The navy pinstripe suit was once the epitome of power dressing and a favourite with City bankers, while the navy blazer with shiny gold buttons has long been popular with royals and became the signature look of the indefatigably debonair Sir Roger Moore. Queen Victoria kickstarted a trend for navy-and-white sailor suits when she dressed four-year-old Prince Albert Edward, later Edward VII, in one in 1846; at last year’s Trooping the Colour, The Princess of Wales and Princess Charlotte wore coordinating nautical-inspired, navy and white outfits. Meanwhile Princes George and Louis appeared at the event in double-breasted navy blazers — just as their father and grandfather had done when they were boys.

Back in 2010, when The Prince and Princess of Wales announced their engagement to the world, they again turned to dark blue, echoing the rich blue of the sapphire engagement ring. Commenting on The Prince of Wales’s choice on their website, bespoke tailors Henry Herbert remarked: ‘The timeless, elegant and ever-sharp navy blue suit will never let its gentleman wearer down, on the most daunting or momentous of professional or personal occasions.’

The colour’s association with formality and style has much to do with the naval uniform that gave this darkest of blues its name. Army officers were the first to wear a uniform (in 1748), but they had to supply their own. The decision to make it dark blue was pragmatic. ‘It was really just taken from fashionable dress,’ explains Dr Amy Miller, fashion historian, curator and author of Dressed to Kill: British Naval Uniform, Masculinity and Contemporary Fashions, 1748-1857. ‘Pretty much everyone in the 18^th century owned an indigo-dyed coat with brass buttons,’ Amy tells me, so it was the obvious choice for the uniform.

Indigo dye, shipped from the colonies, was abundant and very hardwearing. ‘It’s a really good colour in terms of holding colourfastness and it’s not fugitive, so if you pack it away, it’s not going to leach out onto anything that surrounds it,’ says Amy.

True to its origins, navy is a colour that still transports me to the sea. As a teenager, I spent long summers in cut-off denim shorts, and navy-striped rugby and Breton tops, clambering in and out of dinghies with salt-streaked legs. Decades later, I remain a slave to nautical fashion and the permanent place in my wardrobe afforded to navy blue owes much to these happy memories.

Fortunately, my enduring love of navy is endorsed by the highest arbiters of fashion. Chanel, who helped popularise the colour in the 1920s with its chic, nautical-inspired looks, was inspired by its own heritage in its 2025/26 Cruise collection. Meanwhile, Celine’s 2026 Spring collection is an important lesson in how to use navy to anchor brighter shades. For a more classic look, turn to Ralph Lauren, navy’s unofficial ambassador and an expert in harmonising it with ivory, chambray and camel.

The colour might have an upstanding reputation today, but the Navy’s navy was born of bad behaviour. ‘They had a real image problem,’ says Amy. ‘They were seen as men who had been away too long at sea in the exclusive company of other men … They were crass and known for being the most profane swearers.’ At the time, the Navy was the country’s largest employer — ongoing conflict and colonial expansion required manpower — and a new uniform was a key part of a strategy to rehabilitate their reputation.

That bad reputation was eventually blown out of the water (no pun intended) by a series of spectacular naval victories, including the Battle of the Nile, the Battle of Camperdown, and the Battle of Trafalgar. In the wake of these dazzling wins, The Times published a fashion feature proclaiming the Navy’s uniform’s inky blue shade as the hot new thing and giving it its new name — navy. ‘[Wearing navy blue] was a really good way for people to engage and to show their patriotism,’ says Amy.

Some of our oldest schools have embraced a navy uniform, too. At Harrow, a dark blue blazer is paired with a varnished straw hat and matching ribbon; Oundle is famous for its natty navy-pinstripe culottes and it was the affordability of blue and yellow dyes that dictated Christ’s Hospital’s uniform. Almost 500 years later, students still wear the belted navy two-piece and buttercup-yellow knee-high socks.

Navy blue has also seeped into luxury and high street fashion. In Country Life guest editor Sir David Beckham’s wardrobe, you’ll find modern versions of the Admiral’s great coat, introduced in the 1800s, and the pea coat, issued to ratings a century later. In November, Lady Victoria Beckham watched Sir David receive his knighthood while wearing a navy dress from her own label. ‘Navy is more in fashion than it has ever been,’ says stylist Alex Longmore, whose clients have included Jodie Kidd, Zara Tindall and Dame Joan Collins.

The 2025 Venice Film Festival was awash with navy — often with fabulous flourishes. Amanda Seyfried’s Prada navy silk dress was embellished with a bold red bow, while the navy satin of Julia Roberts’ Versace gown was broken up by a striking black harlequin pattern. ‘There’s something so chic about wearing black and navy together,’ says Alex. The pair made headlines — wearing navy of course — when they turned up to separate photocalls in the same outfit.

People feel they can trust navy, explains Alex. It ‘behaves well’ in an outfit. It’s a shade that demands respect, though, so pairing it with neons can look ‘a bit confusing. The colours don’t really merge’. Her other tips include not wearing too much navy all at once and — permit me to pat my navy-clad self on the back — always having a navy-stripe Breton top to hand (paired with jeans and an oversized jacket). For inspiration, Alex suggests looking to Gwyneth Paltrow. ‘Gwyneth is someone who gets wearing navy just so right,’ she says. ‘She wears quite a lot of cream cashmere [with it] and is quite preppy in her style’.

Navy is a popular colour with people in high-profile positions. ‘I’ve turned to navy blue when people have something formal to do and they don’t want to stand out, but they don’t want to wear something as somber as black,’ says Alex.

More than 40 years have passed since the publication of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, but the rules still hold. ‘There’s almost a cheapness to black now that there isn’t with navy blue,’ says Amy. ‘Black is so ubiquitous. Navy is a cut above.’

'Play,’ Albert Einstein once said, ‘is the highest form of research.’ The frazzle-haired physicist had a point — our childhood psyches are profoundly shaped by the toys with which we grew up. Not simply objects to idle away a day, they offered imaginative windows into faraway worlds, a means to learn the ethics of competition, were conduits for education and, in the form of plush animals, heartfelt companions (some, as with Evelyn Waugh’s doomed Sebastian Flyte and his bear Aloysius, became firm friends for life).

Many of our most popular toys also possess fascinating creation stories and reflect the historical and cultural milieus into which they were born. Here, we present 14 of the most influential, intriguing and inexplicable playthings from the past century or so.

Toy soldiers (1893)

Miniature military men have existed for millennia — examples in clay date back to ancient Egypt — but were revolutionised by British toy manufacturer W. Britain in 1893, with the invention of the cheap technique of ‘hollow casting’ figures in lead. This was quickly emulated by other companies, including John Hill & Co and Hanks Bros, and the UK’s soldier-making method became the industry standard. The fantastically detailed, table-top armies of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k may have usurped the traditional soldier, but W. Britain still creates meticulous, multi-era American Civil War, Revolutionary and Anglo-Zulu models (to name but a few) from its new base in Ohio, USA. The rules of toy-soldier warfare would be standardised by none other than science-fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, in his 1913 book Little Wars.

Steiff Teddy Bear (1897)

No cuddly companion spans the generations quite like the teddy bear — of which Steiff’s is the Ursidae urtext. The company was founded by seamstress Margarete Steiff in the German city of Giengen in 1880 and began selling a variety of animal-themed toys internationally at London’s Harrods in 1895. The famous mohair bear with movable limbs — snappily dubbed ‘55 PB’ — was created by her nephew, Richard, in 1897, based on drawings he made at a zoo. Another Steiff family member, Franz, would add the trademark ear button in 1904, although the bear wouldn’t develop its fearsome, gurgling growl for another four years. The world was rapt and, in 1907, the company made nearly one million bears, the craze galvanised earlier in the decade by a cartoon of President ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt with a bear cub in The Washington Post (hence the name).

Monopoly (1935)

Monopoly was originally invented, in 1903, by anti-monopolist Lizzie Magie as The Landlord’s Game — a means of explaining American political economist Henry George’s single-tax theory, it was intended to teach the player about the pitfalls of economic inequality (jolly evening in, eh?). The idea was later pilfered and tweaked into the gleefully avaricious boardgame we know today by Charles Darrow, who sold the copyright to Parker Brothers. First released in 1935, Monopoly was redesigned by Waddingtons and a British version appeared a year later.

Rather thrillingly, during the Second World War, the British Secret Intelligence Service commissioned a special edition. Replete with hidden compasses, maps, real money and other items, it was distributed by fake charity organisations to British prisoners-of-war in Nazi Germany to aid attempted escapes.

Slinky (1943)

It takes serious gumption to market a minimalist metal coil, working to the principles of Hooke’s empirical law of spring physics, as a gleefully entertaining and space-age timekiller to children — but such was the initiative of American naval engineer Richard T. James. He created his helical spring in 1943 (his wife, Betty, came up with the unimprovable name), demonstrating its abilities at a Philadelphia department store two years later and selling 400 models in 90 minutes to a public entranced by its freakish ability to travel down stairs and bounce, seemingly at odds with the laws of gravity. By the time of Betty’s death in 2008, and bolstered by the release of the Slinky Dog in 1952, the smashing spring had shifted 300 million pieces worldwide.

Mr Potato Head (1952)

Created by George Lerner, in 1949, as the rather more prosaic Funny Face Man, Mr Potato Head — rebranded by Hasbro in 1952 — can boast not only being the first toy advertised on television, but also starring in the first advertisement to be aimed squarely at children. Until 1964, the characterful spud comprised merely a set of plastic parts to be stuck into a real potato (not supplied); the russet plastic body was included only after parental complaints about rotting vegetables. This starchy señor was an immediate hit, selling one million units in its first year — possibly aided by a polio outbreak keeping children indoors and the fact that early television sales were booming.

Matchbox Cars (1953)

The definitive die-cast toy-car brand was introduced by Britain’s Lesney Products in 1953 and inaugurated with a model of Elizabeth II’s coronation coach. Its second fun-size facsimile, a green and red Aveling Barford Diesel Road Roller, was designed to sit inside a matchbox, as creator Jack Odell’s daughter was only allowed to take a toy to school that would fit within one. The roller was the first in the company’s I-75 range; umpteen cars and vehicles of all makes and stripes — from hum-drum hatchbacks and Transit vans through slick sportscars, hovercraft, snow ploughs and novelty banana cars — have appeared since.

Etch A Sketch (1959)

The fiddly tool of many aspiring aesthetes, the Etch A Sketch (not to be confused with the similarly monochromatic Magna Doodle) is a canny muddling of mechanics and art, invented in the late 1950s by Frenchman André Cassagnes and launched by the Ohio Toy Company in 1960. The name is a misnomer, as there’s no etching here whatsoever: the toy is a kind of plotter wherein two styluses displace aluminium powder stuck to a screen with electromagnetics, creating lineographic images of varying artistic worth.

Rubik’s Cube (1974)

The timeless combination puzzle, invented in 1974 by Hungarian architectural professor Ern Rubik, had sold 500 million units world-wide as of 2024. The multi-coloured cube (actually 26 separate ‘cubelets’ around a 3D ‘cross’ at the centre) is a work of infuriating simplicity — it’s 54 separate tiles capable of being scrambled into any one of 43 quintillion combinations. Solving this blighter at all is rather flummoxing, let alone in the head-spinning 3.05 seconds it took current cube-conquering record holder Xuanyi Geng this April — and, even more improbably, in the 5.66 seconds Dhruva Sai Meruva took to do the same, one-handed, last autumn.

Sylvanian Families (1985)

This peaceable kingdom of anthropomorphic animals, made of soft-textured, flocked plastic, was created by Japanese company Epoch in 1985. Initially given the snappy moniker of Pleasant Friends of the Forest Epoch System Collection Animal Toy Sylvanian Families, the characters and their homes were designed to immerse children growing up in urban high-rises in more bucolic, sun-dappled environs. Arriving in Britain two years later, the brand was a phenomenon, with woodland creatures including owls, rabbits, hedgehogs and foxes dressed in 1950s domestic garb dominating many a childhood. A shop selling nothing but Sylvanian figurines opened in Highbury, north London, in 1992 and remained in business for 30 years.

Nintendo Game Boy (1989)

Nintendo’s definitive handheld console — a green-screened, dowdy-grey brick of a thing — upended the world of computer games when it launched in 1989. Created by Gunpei Yokoi and the Nintendo Research & Development No 1 Department, it’s a truly totemic piece of design that has sold (together with its colour sibling) more than 120 million units and facilitated classic games as addictive as Tetris, Super Mario Land, Pokémon, Kirby’s Dream Land and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.

Pogs (1991)

A Technicolour take on the Hawaiian pastime of milk caps, Pogs was a minimalist and heated game that saw players attempt to flip over stacks of illustrated cardboard discs by throwing, from an angle and at great speed, a plastic ‘kini’ disc at them (schoolyard rules demanded crucial clarification on whether the flipped discs would be taken by the victor for ‘keeps’). Revived in 1991 by an O’ahu schoolteacher called Blossom Galbiso, the name harks back to a Hawaiian juice drink (POG or ‘passionfruit, orange and guava’), the lids of which were originally used to play the game; the hairy, surfboarding troglodyte that became the World Pog Federation’s de facto mascot was the juice carton’s logo.

Tamagotchi (1996)

A pocket-sized, ovoid digi-pet, introduced by Bandai in 1996 and still around today, Tamagotchi is a portmanteau of tamago (meaning ‘egg’) and uotchi (‘watch’). The concept is simple: the ‘player’ (or parent) attempts to raise a tiny, pixelated blob creature through several developmental life stages by feeding, cleaning and playing with it, tending to its particular needs as it communicates its demands with a series of beeps (an especially irritating design quirk at 4am). The inevitable cycles of neglect and death were an oddly profound life lesson, although the Tamagotchi could thrive into old age if cared for attentively enough — one apocryphally lived to the ripe old age of 89 days.

Furby (1998)

A semi-sentient robotic pet taken to the eerie nth-degree, the Furby — a kind of mish-mash owl-hamster thing — was created by Tiger Electronics in 1998. Blessed with rudimentary movement (the eyes and mouth opened and closed, it could raise its ears and rise slightly on its haunches), the uncanny little critter could also speak 42 words in a language called Furbish and developed a basic grasp of English as it ‘aged’. When gathered in a group, the toys happily jabbered away to each other via infrared ports on their foreheads like something from a Stephen King novella. An immediate Christmas smash hit, 40 million of the furry automatons were sold in the first three years alone.

Jellycats (1999)

A 21st-century successor, of sorts, to Steiff, Jellycat — founded by Thomas Gatacre in London in 1999 — is now the world’s foremost menagerie of cuddly animals, foodstuffs and sundry inanimate objects. From the sweetly furious Timmy Turtle (also available in a frankly unedifying garden-gnome outfit) and rather more jovial Fuddlewuddle Monkey to the wearied Persimmon dragon, a smiley monstera plant and a variety of Gallic pâtisserie (the mille-feuille is particularly crackers), they’re as sweetly inspired as they are maniacally popular, infuriating parents the world over by selling out in the blink of an eye.

If the Victorian Christmas card had a tick list of favourite features, cherubic girls warming their hands in soft fur muffs would rank highly. Yet the muff can be traced further back — perhaps to the sheepskin hand coverings used by monks more than 1,000 years ago — and certainly to the 16th century, when sleeves began to recede and sumptuous muffs, suspended on a chain from the girdle, became the fancy ornaments of the nobility.

The Victorian journalist and author Frank Hird, writing in The Girl’s Own Annual of 1896 was an ardent enthusiast. ‘Of all the accessory details of feminine toilette, the muff is the most fascinating. Be it of costly fur, a triumph of millinery, a piece of twisted velvet with coquettish bows of ribbon inconsequently placed here and there, or of plain cloth demurely braided and corded, with wise-looking tassels, it is always an incident in [a] woman’s appearance that cannot be overlooked,’ he gushes. He attributes the invention to an unknown Venetian woman of the late 1400s, who ‘appeared in public one winter day carrying a rolled piece of velvet lined with fur, its two ends fastened with crystal buttons’.

From here, the trend made its way to France, suggesting that its English name may originate from moufle, meaning mitten. The trend later ventured north and words such as mof, meaning sleeve in Dutch, hint at the muff’s tubular shape as well as its precursor: a thick fur cuff into which a hand could retreat.

The muff’s saucy double meaning was already at play in the 1700s and may be hinted at in Henry Fielding’s episodic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Here, one belonging to Sophia Western is a symbol of the romantic love between her and Tom, who kisses it passionately in her absence and declares it ‘the prettiest muff in the world’. By contrast, in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, the muff denotes wealth rather than feeling when the materialistic Mrs Allen invites an obliging James Morland to guess the price of her latest purchase.

Whereas Morland may have had to feign interest in Mrs Allen’s new muff, many important male figures have gone so far as to add it to their own wardrobes. According to Hird, Henry III of France (1551–89), a renowned fashionista, was an early adopter of the muff and ‘sheltered his hands in masses of ribbon laced together with gold thread with heavy fringes thereto of twisted gold and jewels’. The 17th-century diarist Samuel Pepys was more than satisfied with his thrifty foray into the fashion, writing: ‘This day I first did wear a muffe, being my wife’s last year’s muffe, and now I have bought her a new one, this serves me very well.’

Across the Channel, Louis XIV reportedly made a more decadent choice, opting for a muff made of tiger’s fur. Lower down the social scale, some accounts suggest that even executioners made use of fabric muffs, ensuring their hands were warm enough to undertake their grisly task. Yet, not everyone liked to see men with muffs. A 1735 print complains that the fey dandy depicted seems a little too delighted with his highly decorative version and a caption in French invites him to cast off the effeminate accoutrement and instead warm himself in a woman’s embrace.

With the muff firmly back in female hands — or female hands back in the muff — there was no less exhibitionism. By the turn of the 19th century, this fluffy status symbol had inflated to ludicrous proportions, dwarfing its owners, who waltzed around with hand warmers the size of sheep, inviting the admiration of fashion illustrators and the mockery of cartoonists.

Whether large or small, fur was once the obvious choice for the muff and offered numerous possibilities. ‘Today the monkey, blue fox, beaver… and ermine are metamorphosed into Muffs; tomorrow will come the furs of sable, of otter, of chinchilla, of squirrel, of marten, of wolf…,’ remarked 19th-century writer Octave Uzanne in 1883, lamenting ‘the inconstancy of la Mode’. In place of fur, many ladies chose delicately embroidered or beaded fabric, sometimes featuring mezzotint portraits. They lined them with velvet, satin or silk and twinned them with a matching tippet, dress or cloak.

In the 1860s, feathers came to the fore, crossing from France into England, much to the dismay of British commentators, who saw it as a deliberate attempt by the French, having lost Canada to the British, to undermine its lucrative fur trade. Ranging from creams and browns to gaudy reds and blues, the outlandish designs both delighted and appalled.

Many muffs were not only a vision to behold, but smelled wonderful, too. ‘Some became veritable scent-bags, perfumed with heliotrope, rose, gardenia, verbena, violet, or they were powdered inside with orris root or poudre à la Maréchale,’ notes Uzanne, in his extensive eulogy on the muff.

Designed first and foremost to keep a lady warm on a walk or in her carriage, many offered additional functions. ‘Some muffs incorporated pockets to hold small items, such as handkerchiefs, and in the 19th century, muff bags or purse muffs made a brief appearance,’ explains Beatrice Behlen, senior curator of fashion and the decorative arts at the London Museum, where the collection includes a silk-lined cream skunk fur muff (1870–1900) made for Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll.

Some ladies even placed beloved lap dogs in muffs, carrying them around like little dolls. However, Suffragette Mary Richardson was less sentimental. She concealed a meat cleaver in hers to slash Diego Velázquez’s painting The Toilet of Venus (the ‘Rokeby Venus’) at the National Gallery in protest at Emmeline Pankhurst’s arrest; whereas Edith Garrud, a Suffragist-cum-martial arts expert, used hers to smuggle wooden clubs. Some women hid delicate pistols in there for self-defence against highwaymen and others simply popped in a small ceramic bottle of hot water to help keep the cold at bay.

Now that women had secured the vote and were increasingly undertaking paid work, they rolled up their sleeves and cast off the muff as a symbol of feminine passivity at odds with the new era. ‘Muffs seem to have been largely abandoned after the Second World War,’ notes Behlen, a muff aficionado, who nevertheless acknowledges its shortcomings. ‘They are not the most practical of accessories and were probably only ever carried by men and women who did not have to work for a living.’

The streamlined silhouette of the 1960s seemed to have killed off the muff for good. However, by the 1980s, it was making sporadic appearances, with several of Princess Diana’s ensembles featuring the forsaken item. The accessory has refused to be stifled ever since, reappearing at regular intervals in surprising new incarnations: in neon orange shearling for Celine in 2014; in tartan for British brand Shrimps in 2020; and in shaggy black faux fur for Anna Sui’s Autumn/Winter 2025 ready-to-wear collection, which takes ‘madcap heiress’ as its theme. Fashion followers and fans of Sex and the City may have noted that when Mr Big finally tells Carrie, ‘you’re the one’ in the season six finale in Paris (2004), her iconic eau de nil tutu is paired with a cosy brown fur muff.

Which all begs the question: could the muff ever make a major comeback? ‘Muffs are difficult to incorporate into modern life,’ responds Behlen, with a degree of regret. ‘Having said that, I always fancied a muff made of padded nylon, like a puffer jacket. Particularly if it could have a little pocket for my phone.’

This feature originally appeared in the December 10, 2025 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

This Christmas, Country Life is raising a glass to the unsung heroes who work all year round to make our seasonal celebrations special. All their stories will be collected together on our Christmas section.

Today, it's Hannah Bidmead of Nancy & Betty Christmas crackers.

When Hannah Bidmead started designing Christmas cards and wrapping paper, she named the fledgling enterprise Nancy and Betty, after her grandmother Nancy and Nancy’s twin sister Betty who, as small children, had been models for Pears soap. ‘I’d always wanted my own business,’ she says. ‘My great-grandmothers had been a milliner and dressmaker respectively; there were butchers and bakers in the family. Shopkeeping was in my blood, you could say.’

One day, after her designs had been picked up by several stockists, she left her young baby at home with her mother and joined the queue for Liberty’s Open Day Call in London. ‘You sat down with buyers to show your wares — it was like speed dating,’ she explains.

‘There were 900 people in the queue and I waited three hours, but it was worth it.’ The store has stocked her work ever since, including crackers boxed in signature Liberty purple.

These days, her bespoke crackers are sold in most high-end stores — one of the gifts secreted in the Harvey Nichols ones is a bottle stopper engraved with the HN logo — and thousands of boxes are sent out to online customers.

Eight staff (elves) make the crackers, starting in January. ‘We use sustainable paper stock, fully recyclable,’ Hannah assures me, ‘and plant a tree for every box sold.’ Inside are elegant little presents — a wooden salt scoop, a cocktail jigger, a honey drizzler — and there are ‘fill your own’ versions. The King crackers are huge and opulent in a wooden box, priced at £159.

‘They are well over the top,’ she admits, ‘but they sell out every year.’

For those who like to go to town when dressing the Christmas table, Hannah offers one-stop shopping. You can play matchy-matchy with the whole spread, from napkins to crackers to place mats and cards or — controversial — mix your pheasants with your geese and robins.

Hannah Bidmead's Christmas treat ‘I like Christmas Eve best. In the morning, the children and I make ginger biscuits listening to Classic FM. At 3pm, the whole village walks to church for the service and then everyone goes to the pub.’

www.nancyandbetty.com