Poshstock!
Luxury glamping, Michelin-starred food and sex seminars on erotic wellness – welcome to Wilderness, the festival locals have dubbed...
TIME was when festivals were the preserve of penniless hippies who would bunk over a flimsy fence to spend a groovy weekend swaying to obscure folk bands and downing cheap cider.
But in a sign of just how much things have changed, this week Britain’s poshest festival opens in the rolling Cotswolds countryside. It may be called Wilderness, but with its £6,000 yurts, mindfulness classes and supermodels hosting champagne picnics, it is hardly a wasteland.
Held each August on a 5,000-acre estate owned by Lord Rotherwick, Wilderness is a lifestyle jamboree of luxury glamping, seven-course menus from Michelin-starred chefs and seminars on ‘erotic wellness’. No wonder locals dub it Poshstock.
On one of the stages, Old Etonian actor Damian Lewis, the star of Homeland, will be performing his debut album, as part of an eclectic music line-up that also includes South Korean DJ Peggy Gou and dance act Underworld.
General admission tickets are £230 for the weekend, but costs spiral for high-end extras, with glamping options ranging from luxury bell tents costing from £939 to an eight-person ‘Lotus Mahal’ tent at £6,177. Local resident Liz Reason said: ‘It’s rather corporate. It’s a festival for the Waitrose crowd.’
Festival-goers – or ‘Wildlings’ – pay even more for experiences such as sommelier-led wine classes, sexual wellness seminars and a ‘Kundalini goddess ceremony’ to ‘waken your divine feminine energy and step into the power of your heart’.
But for all the esoteric language, Wilderness is a nakedly commercial enterprise, with the company
that runs it owned by global events behemoth Live Nation, a £9 billion-a-year-business.
The festival attracts a suitably A-list crowd, too, with previous attendees including Cara Delevingne, who hosted a picnic for luxury brand Mulberry, David Cameron, soon after leaving
Downing Street, Jenna Coleman, Game of Thrones actor Kit Harington, Lady Amelia Windsor and former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney.
Wilderness regular Simon Mills, 58, last month described the sort of middle-aged, upper-middle-class people who flock to Wilderness, writing in You magazine: ‘Mum will go all Alexa Chung, wearing hotpants and wellies. Her husband will don face-paint, lilac harem pants and a top hat adorned with feathers. He will be back at his job, as an investment banker, on Monday: woozy, bleary eyed and around eight grand poorer.’