'Wade through a bog in the morning and then waltz into The Ritz for breakfast': For fashion and function, you can't beat country clothing
For the fashion conscious city dweller, the lines between rural and urban are blurring, especially in outerwear, says Madeleine Silver.
A faded Fera poacher gilet in an east London beer garden; a Schöffel fleece writhing at a sweaty Hyde Park gig; or a pair of tasselled Fairfax & Favor Reginas settling in for brunch on the King’s Road. The sport of spying countrymen (and women) in the urban wilds has always been akin to seeing a stride in the hunting field — it was just a case of getting your eye in. But the line between country and city gear has never been more blurred, and so what was once about dialling in to the tattersall shirts, is now the sartorial wild west.
Anyone hankering after a Burberry trench would be forgiven for not knowing that when Thomas Burberry established the supersonic brand in Basingstoke in 1856, the idea was to create practical outerwear for the unpredictable British weather, with the precursor to its trench worn by army officers and polar explorers.
Barbour was one of the places to be seen at London Fashion Week in September.
Then there’s Barbour, so entwined with A-listers and London Fashion Week that it’s hard to remedy it with the straight-talking Beaufort wax jacket designed by Dame Margaret Barbour in 1983.
And for more than two decades a pair of Hunters has been a red herring for anyone hoping to pigeon-hole the green welly brigade — Kate Moss was the disrupter when she debuted them at Glastonbury in 2005. But even Holland Cooper, with its comparatively short-lived heritage, has long since spread its provincial wings: Claudia Winkleman cloaked in its full-length Regency Coat on The Traitors is a long way from knee-deep mud at Badminton Horse Trials, where founder Jade Holland Cooper started selling tweed miniskirts in 2008.
'We got some custom jackets made for Maribou State for their last tour. And they were sending us photos of them on a farm in Hampshire somewhere, and then next thing they’re on stage playing to crowds in the same gear'
The latest in Britain’s long line of clothes that masterfully straddle the city-country divide is Fera — tagline ‘made for the street and the stream’ — which since 2021 has been dressing the kind of thirty-something-year-old who could happily be skinning a rabbit in the morning and DJing in Hoxton by the evening. Think flannel shirts, workwear t-shirts and their bestseller poacher gilet. Good luck deciphering if the man in the Fera khaki wading vest has ever stepped foot on a riverbank or not.
'If we can bring the culture that means so much to us to people both urban and rural in an engaging way, then we are achieving a key part of our mission,' says Fera's Sidney Hiscox.
‘There is something deeply British about country clothing. It unlocks a deep sense of nostalgia and identity and if done right, it is a timeless style,’ explains Sidney Hiscox, who founded Fera with his childhood friend Declan Morrison. The pair met aged four and grew up together in Wiltshire, Morrison on the sprawling Fonthill Estate outside Tisbury.
‘Think about Burberry and Barbour — country wear and the countryside have always had an influence on contemporary style. Even people born and raised in the city often have some connection to the country, maybe a grandparent or friend or even just an interest. If we can bring the culture that means so much to us to people both urban and rural in an engaging way, then we are achieving a key part of our mission,’ he says.
'We never targeted a more lifestyle consumer, we’ve just acquired them as the brand has grown and developed its reputation for performance and quality'
‘We both had incredibly lucky childhoods, running around being feral, brewing up ideas while we were wading up a river fishing, or racing around on motorbikes. And we wanted to create clothing which represented the lifestyle we loved,’ says Hiscox, who until Fera was born was drawn to Carhartt-type American workwear brands over any hooray red trouser aesthetic. ‘We’re always trying to show a bit of edge to the countryside. Whether that’s a fly fisherman skating around London finding spots to fish. Or our Christmas advert last year, which was an 80-year-old shepherd flinging his quad bike back to get his Fera parcel in time. I’m always scared to use the word cool — you can’t call yourself cool — but that’s what we set out to do.
‘The reality is that city wear and country wear doesn’t have to be that different anymore. There’s obviously the very function specific clothing which might be the exception. But Fera’s whole philosophy is about being able to wade through a bog in the morning and then waltz into The Ritz for breakfast [without getting changed]. We got some custom jackets made for [electronic music duo] Maribou State for their last tour. And they were sending us photos of them on a farm in Hampshire somewhere, and then next thing they’re on stage playing to crowds in the same gear.’
Schöffel has been synonymous with the countryside since the 1990s.
If Fera set out to create something that worked just as well in town as it does in the sticks, then for Schöffel it’s been a happy accident. ‘We have the same core consumer now as we did in the 1990s when the original Ptarmigan shooting coat was launched,’ says Schöffel’s executive director Marcus Janssen. ‘We have been very conscious to carry on developing products for that core country consumer — it’s always been about technical performance and functionality first. Our demographic has got younger, but that’s because shooting has got younger over the years, rather than us targeting a younger consumer. In the 1990s, it was largely middle-aged landowners and farmers shooting. But the commercialisation of shooting has made it more accessible.’
Schöffel has the Oakham fleece gilet to thank for making it a brand as comfortable on certain stretches of the District Line as it is on the peg. ‘The fleece was originally part of a three in one shooting coat that you could zip in and zip out. And very soon we realised people were wanting more of the fleeces than the shooting coats,’ explains Janssen. And so, the Fulham lifejacket was born.
‘But we never targeted a more lifestyle consumer, we’ve just acquired them as the brand has grown and developed its reputation for performance and quality. People are always drawn to the realisation that country clothing lasts. A shooting coat is a lot of money. But if you’re going to wear it to smarter events or to the office as well, and it’s going to last — we still see 15 or 20-year-old Ptarmigan shooting coats out in the field all the time — then that’s good value for money.’
Jade Holland-Cooper has built an empire from her stand at Badminton Horse Trials.
When Marcus Fairfax Fountaine thinks of his Fairfax & Favor customer, it’s similarly someone who ‘moves effortlessly between town and country. She values quality over quantity, invests in timeless pieces rather than trends, and wants a wardrobe that works across every part of her life,’ he says. ‘It’s not unusual for someone to spend the morning in the countryside and end the day meeting friends in London, still wearing the same Fairfax & Favor Tetbury handbag or pair of Fairford boots. If they feel completely at home in both settings, then we’ve done our job.’
Back in those London beer gardens, a Barbour remains the 'OG' of bringing country clothing into the urban zeitgeist. The ultimate country-to-town chameleon. Since its 1894 beginnings in South Shields supplying oilskins to sailors and fishermen and then riding its 1980s Sloane Ranger era, its modern reputation has been helped along the way by collaborations with the biggest fashion houses, from Ganni to Paul Smith.
But as with other outerwear, it is its practicality and versatility that has let it hold its ground in town — plus, perhaps, a hefty dose of nostalgia. As Sienna Miller, who fronts its Autumn/Winter 2026 campaign told BritishVogue: ‘When you go to someone’s country house, you don’t ask, ‘Have you got a wax jacket I could borrow?’ You say, ‘Have you got any Barbours?’ It’s part of our DNA. Baked beans and Barbours – and it’s never not been cool.”’
