The Good Life
Corduroy, checks and wellington boots – such are the sartorial staples of us country folk.
The first thing we did after arriving in the country was to go to town to buy me a pair of Red Bands. The first thing I did with my Red Bands was to take them outside and rub them in the mud. Shiny, pristine
Red Bands are not cool.
You have to wear Red Bands in the country. There is probably a law saying so. These gumboots were to replace my city gumboots, which were red and paisley-patterned. I was very fond of those boots, but I might as well have got about with a sign on my back saying “I’m from Auckland”. In the country, that is not the look to go for.
Carolyn, who looks after the milking of the sheep that graze our paddocks, gave me a handy sartorial tip for the country: put plastic bags over your socks before you put on your gumboots on frosty mornings. This would be useful if one was a proper country person and got up at the crack of dawn and went outside. I do get up at the crack of dawn, but I do not go outside until it warms up a bit. Lazy bloody Aucklanders.
We are often caught by the delightful rural postie being lazy bloody Aucklanders. Greg went out to her toot one morning in his dressing gown and gumboots and sunglasses. “Look at you in your fashion!” she said. “The animals will be laughing at you!” (By the way, not that we are laughing at you, Aucklanders, but we get our mail delivered six days a week.)
I have yet, Red Bands notwithstanding, to work out my country fashion.
I told my friend McLilty, a broadcaster and the most stylish person I know, that I thought I would take up the wearing of dungarees. She said, gently, that it took a certain “sort of femme” to pull off the dungaree look. By which she meant “you are not that femme”.
Our country friends, The Artist and The Gardener, are country style personified. They wear lovely old corduroy trousers in greens and browns, checked shirts and beautifully polished good leather shoes. They have a vast collection of hats. They are proper country gents and they hat up, nattily, for occasions.
The Gardener is also fond of tartan and he has gifted to Greg a gorgeous pair of woollen tartan mess trousers, which I am completely jealous of. But I don’t think I am a tartan sort of femme either.
Iam contemplating the Swanndri. Didn’t Karen Walker attempt to make Swanndri a fashion thing some years ago? In town, we met a small dog called Rex, who was wearing a small-dog-sized Swanndri jacket. It had pockets, in which he kept his treats. He looked very fetching, but I fear I would not.
I wouldn’t mind a pair of those Le Chameau Vierzonord wellington boots that rich Tatler country types like that upstart Kate Middleton wear. The most expensive pair available costs a mere £999.999, I read. I assume that is a typo, but who knows? Perhaps for that you get diamonds on the soles of your wellies. I have sheep shit on mine, which is another form of ostentation.
I used to turn up my city nose at the puffer jacket. Now they are fashion, apparently. Accompanying a website story headlined “How To Wear a Puffer Jacket the Fashion Way” was a picture of a Stella McCartney puffer coat at Paris Fashion Week. The model looked like a giant hot water bottle cover. She was also wearing a head scarf à la the Queen.
I have an awful feeling I may be a head scarf/puffer jacket sort of femme. Nobody looks good in a puffer jacket – even when topped with a Hermès head scarf, say. And I am a dead ringer for the Michelin Man in mine. But in the country, there are only some sheep, and the postie, to laugh at me. So, fashion? Well, pah (or, baa).