Step and Repeat and Repeat
by Simon Mills
the united kingdom has walked away from the European Union, but, by accident more than design, the influence of languid Mediterranean tradition seems nonetheless to have had an effect on the gait with which we do that walking: relaxed, insouciant and just a little bit showy.
It may have taken a devastating global pandemic to inspire it, but, centuries after our continental cousins perfected it and, prevented by law from doing much of anything else, over the past 12 months Great Britain has at last learned how to promenade, to fare una passeggiata of an early evening and to enjoy a paseo of a postprandial Sunday afternoon.
To promenade successfully, one must not power walk. The passeggiata has nothing to do with heartrate-raising aerobic exercise, and you certainly shouldn’t expect a promenade to tighten your glutes or supercharge the pedometric stats on your Apple watch, which you will have exchanged for a vintage Rolex, the better for signalling your style credentials to fellow, slow-moving promenaders.
To promenade is to stroll, aimlessly, at a leisurely pace, modulating cadence in acknowledgement of attire, pleasant surroundings, agreeable company, pervading politesse and the endless amounts of free time available to everyone. You don’t choose a destination, you map a circuit, an extended lap, arriving back where you first started, and then maybe doing it again, just like they do in Forte dei Marmi or Porto Ercole at around 7pm on a balmy August evening, Loro Piana sweater draped across deeply tanned shoulders.
Observing the restrictions of bubbles and social-distancing mores, a nuevo paseo might see the accompaniment of a statuesque partner in Hermès, an elderly but dapper parent or a handsome canine. Opinions, cigars and impossibly cute kids are all aired with pride and at a gentle saunter. The promenade is both fashion show and socially sanctioned opportunity for flirting, where the most important thing is that everyone involved is immaculately turned out in the kind of well-loved cashmere or brand new, freshly clicked-and-collected swank that our grandparents might have called “Sunday best”.
Cruelly barred from shops, clubs, pubs, cafés, holiday resorts and restaurants — all the places where we used to parade new outfits — we are on foot rather a lot these days. Since April 2020, 31 per cent of Londoners say they are walking to destinations rather than driving or getting the bus. Fifty-seven per cent say they now walk more for exercise, and 42 per cent walk for longer than they did before. The experience has been made more agreeable as nitrogen dioxide levels on the capital’s busiest roads have been cut almost in half since national lockdown measures were first enforced in March 2020.
Today the park, not the party, is where it’s at, and the recent lifestyle hiatus has turned your reporter’s London village green into a live action, weekend-long défilé. Saturdays are busy but Sundays are heaving, the clean paths between the muddy, turfed expanses a constantly rolling, concrete catwalk of contemporary designer names: Off White puffer jackets; oversized Acne Studios alpaca scarves; box-fresh sneakers by Yeezy and Fear of God. There are Russkis in The North Face x Gucci, American hedge funders rocking Patagonia, Pitti Uomo groupie types in Drake’s-approved tweed-suit-and-woolly-hat get-ups. Brown in town? Yes. Sunglasses acceptable at dusk.
Girls walk in gossipy pairs, arms inter-linked, ensemble-coordinated KeepCup and Yeti coffee vessels in hand as they do their notice-me thing. “Vedere e farsi vedere”: seeing and being seen, as the Italian passeggiata pros like to say.
Of course, the UK’s penchant for the promenade is actually nothing new. Italy and Spain might boss the evening stroll now, but we were actually world leaders at the art of the amble for many years, the 19th century being a particularly popular era for the slow-walking, urban outfit-flexer.
Readers of Thackeray will recall the chapter of Vanity Fair set in Vauxhall Gardens, south London, in which the robustly constructed Jos Sedley makes a drunken, promenading arse of himself during a protracted, rack punchmarinaded Sunday afternoon session. Vauxhall Gardens, for non-historians, was several acres of trees and shrubs and attractive walks, originally built in 1661 as London’s premier promenading venue at the beginning of the Restoration. One dressed up to go to Vauxhall, perhaps complying with Baudelaire’s prescription of a gentleman with “an uncanny ability to remove himself from the world while standing astride its heart” observing what is happening with no judgement, developing a deep understanding of life and the benefits of directional outerwear garms from A-Cold-Wall*.
Promenading is civilisation with the brakes applied. Life in the slow lane. No need to hail an Uber. No need to stop and pose for an Instagram post. Just step and repeat and repeat and repeat. So, andiamo a fare qualche vasca! Put on your new Brunello Cucinelli and let’s go do some laps.
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