Dear reader,
A thorough investigation into the sartorial habits of the Cotswoldian population cannot be undertaken lightly: the female of the species roams far and wide in summer, emerging fully from hibernation in June, the month when she bravely abandons the safety of the manor house, finally lured outdoors by such delights as the glorious scent of rosa Charles de Mills or the innocent blast of a champagne cork rocketing from a chilled bottle of Ruinart. The inquisitive fashion journalist must now spend her days tracking the rare Femella Cotswoldia in her natural habitat, her only trace left in clues such as the hefty imprint of the new Range Rover SV tyres on mown grass verges, or flattened Net-A-Porter boxes disguised among the recycling, all the better to be hidden from the eyeballs of suspicious husbands. The geographical challenge is immense: the reporter must observe examples of the genus not only across miles of lush hills and verdant valleys, at pony club camps and prep school cricket matches, but finds herself forced to track this divine creature foraging for food at William’s Foodhall in Nailsworth, her fav spot for truffle-hunting, or observe her ‘taking meetings’ with other prep school mummies who run ethical brands on the rooftop deck of the Bamford club, post-Floating Yoga sesh, Dirtea Mushroom Infusion in hand. You can imagine the cost of the diesel darlings.
Needless to say, in the course of my investigations, I got together with director Alex Hartman and we courageously ventured out into the field to make an extremely serious micro-doc on the subject, our third episode of Cotswolds Confidential. After the experience, I can’t tell you how much my respect for the incredible David Attenborough increased: I mean, he did all this in the Arctic, with no nice clothes for miles.
(Btw in the filmette above I am wearing a felt fedora by Anthony Peto, Paris, skirt and jacket by Giuliva Heritage, Le Chameau wellies and the tote is vintage Paravel (this one is similar). The car is my ancient Landrover Defender, obvs.)
My intense research reveals that, just as the beauty of the Cotswolds stems from the land, hence fashion here stems from those connected with the land. This is why, dear reader, Farmer Tim will always be eternally stylish in his Mole Valley overalls - they are appropriate, functional and perfectly weathered. And the tweed cap? My god. Iconic. Farmer Tim could walk into a bullpen or a ballroom in it and steal the show.
The ladies who make up the sartorial subsets of the Cotswoldian species, however, are unable to be quite so laid back about their clothing choices: fashion for them is a permanent existential crisis, for they know not whether the next person they bump into will be the stable lass or the Duchess of Marlborough, and aspire to be appropriately dressed to see both. So, forthwith, an analysis of three female variants of the species:
Ladies-Who-Farm
The fashionable Farmer-ess: from the Burberry wellies, left, to the knackered fleece, right, Iris Lasnet always dresses appropriately. The prime example of this variant of the breed is the shepherdess-slash-Burberry model, Iris Lasnet, who is in her early twenties and is a student at The Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. An involuntary icon among the young farmer-ess set, and the daugher of the late model Stella Tennant, she glides seamlessly from runway to lambing shed. When this reporter analysed Iris’s fashion choices at a forensic level, yours truly was left with the somewhat unscientific conclusion that her style stems from an unselfconscious knack for dressing entirely appropriately for the occasion, whether it’s in her Scot Agri cap for lambing season, or a vintage Comme des Garçons skirt and punky boots for lunch at Badminton House with the Duchess of Beaufort, where I overhead makeup mogul Charlotte Tilbury tell her, ‘never, ever let anyone cut off your hair at a shoot’.
Charlotte Tilbury, left, gives Iris Lasnet invaluable career advice regarding her hair before lunch at Badminton House, Gloucestershire, home of the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort. Ladies-Who-Picnic
Picknicking à la Cotswolds is never, really, just a picnic. The high-octane variant of the species, whose favoured habitat is in the ‘OX’ postcode (preferably with the ‘-bury’ suffix, Charlbury and Cornbury being among the most coveted villages), doesn’t ‘get’ the concept of eating a ploughman’s lunch sitting on the ground in a grassy meadow. No. OX-ers feels safest beneath a marquee (open on all sides for breeze and views), perched on a cushioned chair and being offered a saucer of Tattinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc-de-Blancs by a uniformed, floppy-haired Eton boy who is waitering for By Matilda on his gap year. The Posh Picnic dress code, which I’d describe as ‘Provence-adjacent’ is super-specific and the tribe accepts others dressed in such items as: three-quarter length chintz-print Erdem skirts; LoveShackFancy’s eyelet maxi frocks; simple white dresses; canvas wrap skirts; mannish cotton shirts, accessorised with delightfully casual touches like Zoe de Givenchy’s wicker basket, silk neckerchiefs and wide-brimmed straw hats by Lock & Co. (The Lock store in Mayfair, is an amazingly lovely place to shop for a classy, reasonably-priced summer hat, btw.)
At a ‘picnic’ lunch in Amanda Brooks’s garden in Oxfordshire, her friends indulged in frills and florals. (Which is fine until you are 35, after which, avoid, avoid, avoid.)
Ladies-Who-Garden-Tour
Two of the best-dressed women I know are all about garden chic: florist Willow Crosley, left, at a drinks party at Cornbury Park, and landscape architect Miranda Brooks, seen in her Cotswolds garden, right. In June, the American variant of the species arriveth, overdressed but immaculate, for her annual ‘garden tour’ of the Cotswolds, having packed for a different garden each day, and very much inspired by actual Ladies-Who-Garden such as Miranda Brooks, Willow Crossley, Carole Bamford and Catherine Fitzgerald. A private tour of the gardens at Daylesford House with Rupert Golby, the brilliant designer who created the gardens with Lady Bamford (a prized appointment that can only be arranged via deep Bamfordian contacts) calls for something lineny and fresh, swishy enough to waft around the wildflower meadows, but smart enough in case one runs into Lady B. herself, who, this summer, has been glimpsed in the quilted cotton waistcoat worn with the Teasel skirt, crisp but still somewhat relaxed. The wild walk around Rousham, the William Kent masterpiece, calls for a Miranda Brooks-esque practicality to roam the miles of landscape: Purdey’s linen field jacket with their stone cotton pants has the safari feel required, and the American female tends to tramp the gravel paths in Loro Piana’s exquisite Tennis Walk deerskin sneaker. For a roam at Sezincote, the Anglo-Indian pile near Moreton-In-Marsh, bohemian glamour is required, and the chic-hippie style of the florist Willow Crossley is very much the inspiration for wandering among the stone elephants, palm trees and spring-fed pools that populate this garden by Repton, unchanged since the 1850s. The tie-dyed silk dress by La Double J is typical garb for a summery lunch in the orangery on the estate, or for drinks later at The Bull, Charlbury, the area’s most fashionable country pub. American actress and model Dree Hemingway, who used to date the owner, Phil Winser, who also owns Canteen in Notting Hill, can occasionally be seen mooching about here. Dree, who has recently veered effortlessly between her role as Daryl Hannah in American Love Story and the Gucci campaign, looks as cool on the red carpet as she does on a haybale.
The always-cool actress and model Dree Hemingway. I cannot let you go dear readers, without showing you this little clip below of Farmer Tim discussing headwear, a subject upon which he is an expert...
I hope you all enjoyed watching and reading this story as much as I enjoyed creating it. Do let me know - I love hearing from you all, always. Thank you for taking the time,
XXX Plum
P.S. *I had something of a debate with two of my interns, Zeynep Baser and Julien Strick regarding the title of this story. A lifelong devotee of the novel Brideshead Revisited, I have never forgotten the way that the author Evelyn Waugh used the Latin phrase Et In Arcadia Ego as the title of the first part of the book. Literally translated, this means ‘Even in Arcadia, there I am’, where ‘I’ is the personification of Death. The title of this story came to me when I was pottering about dead-heading roses while I was having a break between paragraphs. When I met with Zeynep and Julien and asked them if they ‘got’ the title, Julien shook his head and Zeynep nodded, saying that this was because she had read far too many academic papers on literature. Under interrogation, Julien revealed that when forced to choose between Latin and Chinese at school, he had chosen the latter on the basis that it was more ‘useful’. On these grounds I forgave him for not getting the reference, though I was surprised he had never read Brideshead. Julien felt I should change the title, Zeynep that I should keep it. Faced with a hung jury, I took the executive decision to stick with the Latin: I know my readers are the sort of people for whom a smidgeon of Latin is not a prob, obvs.
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