Old money, new style: How the high fashion world is bringing Sloane style back

A few years ago Jack Carlson, CEO of the US preppy clothier Rowing Blazers, noticed a general reappraisal of Diana, Princess of Wales’s style going on in the fashion media. Seeing an opportunity, the Anglophile American sought out a key piece of the turbo Sloane’s wardrobe from the early 1980s and set about reviving it for a new generation of customers.

During her engagement to the then Prince of Wales, Diana Spencer (of Flat 60, Coleherne Court in Kensington) wore her famous red, intarsia sheep sweater — a lone, black sheep amid a flock of fluffy white ones — to polo matches and on Balmoral stalking weekends with the future king.

Forty years later, the same ‘Warm & Wonderful’ knitwear design, produced under licence by Carlson, proved more popular than ever. To date more than $8million worth of Lady Di’s re-dux black sheep jumper have been sold, mainly to women born long after Diana’s untimely passing.

In subsequent seasons, other key pieces from the late Princess of Wales’s 1980s country casuals closet — her Bill Pashley tweed skirt suit, hooded Barbour jacket, Burberry trench and red ‘Puffa’, all items once dismissed by fashion plates as ‘Sloane’ — have been similarly reclaimed by a nu-gen of younger stylists who have re-categorised the louchely aristocratic, logo-free look as ‘quiet luxe’... and turned it into a contemporary fashion 'lewk'. Boys are hunting down shooting/polo/country-cavorting clobber too.

Last year, when Guy Ritchie’s TV series The Gentlemen began streaming on Netflix, the traditional menswear emporium Cordings of Piccadilly noticed a run on its denim blue, shawl-collar cardigan favoured by Theo James’ character Edward ‘Eddie’ Horniman, 10th Duke of Halstead, and the grey herringbone donegal coat that Eddie’s older brother Freddy Horniman, donned to galavant around the estate at Badminton House, Gloucestershire, a tweed flat cap turned backwards on his head. Also popular, Cording’s classic, four-button, velvet-collared Wincanton tweed jacket, as worn by Lady Sabrina Horniman, Dowager Duchess of Halstead, played by Joely Richardson (above).

Channelling the horsey, Sloaney-pony looks of landed gentry, peak-period Princesses Diana and Anne (that’ll be 1980s and 1970s respectively) and fictional aristos off the telly seems like it is having a fashion moment.

While young men are dressing in baggy Oxford wool pants from Toast, Guernsey knits from Labour and Wait, beaten-up Purdey jackets and sturdy shoes by Grenson (and planning summer road trips up to Scotland — mainly to incorporate a stop-off at the House of Bruar mothership, just off the A9) women are looking forward to spring showers and an excuse to wrap up in items from Alexa Chung’s latest edit of Barbour’s waxed cotton must-haves (above) and eyeing up the country house weekend-inspired AW25 collection designed for Barbour by Erdem Moralioglu. These new pieces, explains Erdem, take the 1894-established company’s heritage of practical, utilitarian, outdoor details, translate them for contemporary, urban tastes, combining the designer’s own ‘language of the feminine’.

Here’s TV star Claudia Winkleman confessing that her striking ensembles for the BBC show Traitors — capes, kilts, Burberry polo necks, Bella Freud coats, Brora knitwear etc — are inspired by the Princess Royal's country-chic looks. Meanwhile, Ray Holman, wardrobe designer on the Cotswolds-set, Jilly Copper-penned Rivals TV show chose to go louche and rakish — putting implacable bounder Rupert Campbell-Black in an open-neck Anderson and Shepherd shirt, a long-line tweed jacket and slim, pleat-top tobacco corduroy trews — an ensemble that can skip effortlessly from Cheltenham members enclosure to Mayfair night club VIP without breaking a sweat.

What is happening here marks a sartorial/socio-cultural appropriation: a subtle, generational shift away from the transient and ephemeral to the more substantial and meaningful; young people attitude meets old money aesthetic. An element of rebellion and sartorial non-conformity at play also, when the pretty much the whole world is dressed either like a Under Armour tech-bro ninja or a boxy cut, baggy trousered, pastel-toned Cos-player, adapting the clothing of the stuffy establishment or a landed and gentrified trad wife, Hermès scarf worn on the head a la Princess Anne, suddenly seems subversive.

Perhaps this new, tweedy, corduroy generation is looking for identity and tribe. While ‘fits’ paraded on Instagram and TikTok tend to be suggestive of little more than a thing for consumerism and an obsession with trends, a get up of hacking jackets, Savile Row suiting, cashmere knitwear and stalwart, Crockett and Jones footwear et al — while bereft of designer names and immediately obvious luxury — hint at something deeper and richer; elevated lifestyle, gracious formality, rarified tradition and a code of conduct. Power, wealth, decadence and illicit outdoor sex. Grade I-listed entitlement and…estate.

To get the look, a different way of thinking is required. Be fabulous but think…less. Less detail, less shopping, fewer logos and fashion. A reduced immediate/Instagrammable impact. When director Emerald Fennell chose clobber for the rich kid cast (Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike) of her dark, country house weekend satire Saltburn, her wardrobe tendencies leaned to the subtle. ‘The thing that is apparent in this movie — and that is very true of the British class system — is the less you dress up, the richer you are.’

Price points and labels are not as important as authenticity, craft, properness, time-honoured silhouettes and a cut of gib that alludes to generational love of equestrian pursuits and blood sports. Old money clothes are often also old. The genuinely pukka, quiet luxe look is a bit foxed and lovingly done in, maybe with gaping holes at the elbows of a Brora 16-ply cashmere sweater. The look is moneyed but understated — this is clothing bought not off the peg in Bond Street stores, but pulled from the boot rooms of country piles and old rectories — squeaky clean, box-fresh newness is for the arrivistes and a dead give away of nouveau-ness. Ideally, garments must have lived a little, mostly outdoors, so brand new wellies and no scars or creases in one’s waxed field jacket are red flags. If in doubt, search ‘Harris Tweed’ on eBay.

Attitude is vitally important. The aroma of wet labrador on one’s clothing is a definite bonus. In the TV series Succession, the gazillionaire Roy family (rooted in Scotland on their father’s side, remember) wore their posh hunting attire with a born-to-this nonchalance. In the memorable, rural Hungary-located episode ‘Hunting’ (aka the ‘Boar on the Floor’ one) Roman, Kendall and Logan’s attire was a melange of the great international outdoors: Barbour, Le Chameau, Filson, Brunello Cuccinelli, Bottega Veneta. Twelve bore weapons cocked, but not a label in sight. Similarly, Alexa Chung wears her brand new Barbour edit garms (especially that pillar box-red ‘Lizzy’ car coat) as if she’s just yanked them from the crewcab of a Series 3 Land Rover.

Coming this season: a luxe take on the barn jacket (The Row and Prada) and an AW25 collection by Seoul-based label SYSTEM that channels ‘posho Brits’ raiding a dressing-up box during a decadent country weekend.

Which sounds like a lot of fun and a great way to kit out a movie…