The Packhams will dress you now...
After following different careers, naturalist Chris has joined his sister Jenny in the fashion world, they tell Elizabeth Day
The fashion designer Jenny Packham was about five years old when her brother, Chris, made her eat a tadpole. “I have a very clear memory of the texture in my mouth,” she says now, some 50 years later, when we meet in a central London hotel. “But maybe I blocked out the memory of swallowing it. I had that uneasy feeling of something happening that I was not that happy with.”
She laughs. Chris, the older by four years, is sitting opposite her – but refusing to admit his guilt. Still, he is not explicitly denying it either. He was always fascinated by wildlife, Jenny says, and growing up in Hampshire, they would spend a lot of time outdoors “waiting for Chris to climb up trees and look into birds’ nests”.
Chris, now 56, went on to become one of Britain’s most respected natural history television presenters, making his name on the children’s programme The Really Wild Show in the Eighties before going on to present Springwatch, where he has been at the helm since 2009.
Jenny, 53, is now a highly acclaimed designer who specialises in bridalwear and whose clients include Angelina Jolie and Keira Knightley. The Duchess of Cambridge wore Jenny Packham on both occasions when she left St. Mary’s Hospital after giving birth to her children and is a fan of her evening wear.
Will the Duchess be wearing one after delivering child number three later this month? “I don’t talk about the
Duchess of Cambridge, I’m afraid,” Jenny says apologetically. “Anything I say gets me into trouble.”
What about Meghan Markle – is there any truth in the rumours that Packham might be designing her wedding dress? “No! I’ve no idea what Meghan will wear, which makes it sort of exciting,” she says. “I’d love it to be ground-breaking. And I assume it will be a British designer.”
But, unusually, we are not actually here to talk not about Jenny’s dresses – but rather Chris’s first foray into fashion. He has just designed a new range for Cotswold Outdoor, specifically for naturalists like him whose idea of a good time is traipsing through soggy fields, picking up badger skulls and bird feathers.
To this end, there are “wet pockets” in each jacket, which can be removed and washed so that parents don’t have to complain about “the smell of rotten fox” lingering on their little darlings’ anoraks. Until now, Chris says, outdoor clothing has been stuck in a rut, made in naff colours and uncomfortable material. “When my step-daughter Megan was about 12 [Packham has been in a relationship with Charlotte Corney, the owner of the Isle of Wight zoo for more than a decade], we had a terrible job getting her into outdoor wear. She didn’t like the colours or the fabric so she’d go out in a normal coat and get soaked.”
With this in mind, the linings of the children’s jackets are patterned with the footprints of various mammals and birds in order to help with identification, and there are no Velcro fastenings because the sound of it being ripped can scare animals off. (Megan, now aged 22, approves.)
Chris is passionate about the need to get more youngsters into the countryside. Although his own childhood was full of yomping about in wellies, he worries this is getting lost in the age of the smartphone.
“I have an enduring and expanding concern that children aren’t accessing the natural environment,” he says. “They don’t go out and their parents don’t take them. I think parents are overprotective and have turned the countryside into a dark, dirty place.
“We’re preoccupied with hygiene and we think the countryside is full of people who wish to do us harm.
“There are time issues when it comes to taking children out, too – if both parents are working long hours,
‘Parents are overprotective and have turned the countryside into a dark, dirty place’
when can they do it? School visits don’t happen like they used to, partly because health and safety regulations are another thing for teachers to get through. There’s a plethora of reasons.”
He recently met some biology undergraduates “and they can’t tell a songthrush from a starling”. He gives a sad little shake of the head, “or an oak tree from an ash tree.”
The two Packham siblings have long shared a love both of nature and the sartorial.
Jenny sewed her first garment at the age of eight – a navy blue corduroy skirt, although she cut the material the wrong way so that one panel was distinctly lighter than the others.
Chris became a punk in his twenties and would save up for individual items of clothing. He speaks longingly of a cashmere John Paul Gaultier coat he bought in Paris in the Eighties, the hem of which got burned on a two-bar fire.
His own aesthetic is informed by the fact that he has Asperger’s – a condition he was diagnosed with in 2005 and which he has spoken openly about in the past, both in an acclaimed BBC documentary and his memoir, Fingers in the Sparkle Jar.
“I look at things in intense detail and take it in very quickly,” Chris explains. “My world is a lot more visually detailed and I have an ability to recall that detail… so I see if pockets aren’t in line or the balance of a garment doesn’t work in terms of size or shape. It’s more comfortable for me if things are symmetrical and in harmony.”
One of the first things Chris did before sitting down for our interview was to identify that all the paintings in the hotel drawing room were hung on a slight slant. He notices everything and stores the information – often for years.
“I can remember lots of clothes I should have bought but didn’t – a brilliant pair of trousers from Brown’s on South Molton Street 15 years ago, for example,” he says. Jenny chimes in: “Whereas I can remember all the clothes I shouldn’t have bought.” She laughs.
The pair have a sweetly affectionate relationship. “I’m impressed and proud of him,” Jenny says. “His ability to go the extra mile and really confront difficult issues is quite incredible. I have always thought, since Chris was very small, that he has the ability to change the world or people’s perceptions of it. Speaking openly about his Asperger’s, I think, has been very helpful. People can see that it’s OK to talk about your mental health.” Chris still gets emails from parents saying that he has helped them understand their autistic child, and thinks it’s positive that more high-profile people, including members of the Royal family, have started to open up about their mental health issues in order to reduce the stigma surrounding it.
But, he adds, “We’ve still got a way to go. A lot of funding has been pulled out of mental healthcare and services are under enormous pressure. “Individuals with autism can be an enormously productive part of society. We need to get them into employment. I’m fortunate enough to have found a niche but there are lots of other people out there who are not as fortunate. I have a voice because of broadcasting and writing, and if you don’t use that voice for creative change, what’s the point?”
As we draw the interview to a close, it strikes me that I have asked the wrong sibling about Meghan Markle’s wedding dress.
Chris, after all, is the designer I’m meant to be interviewing. Might he be in the running to design it?
He grins. “Now, can you imagine?” He thinks about it for a few seconds. “If she’s going on a ramble on her honeymoon or visiting an RSPB reserve, she can come to me.”