England is still great... at fashion

DEATH Of England, a new play at the National Theatre, is a monologue on what it means to be English. Rafe Spall’s virtuoso performance as an angry Englishman features 100 minutes of splenetic invective against, well, almost everything.

Is that what the English are? Is that what we are seen to be? The issue of national identity has become such a hot potato that when I mentioned writing about it here, my boyfriend grimaced and said I was bound to land myself in trouble. Couldn’t I think of something more personal to write?

But I can’t think of much that’s more personal than how we identify, not just in terms of gender, but in terms of where we think of as home. Who we regard as ‘us’. And how do we want to be seen.

A recent issue of Italian Vogue has ludicrously come under fire from a member of Italy’s far-Right for featuring a beautiful model of Senegalese descent, who has spent her whole life in the Veneto district of that country, in their Italian Beauty issue.

Trump followers crave a narrowminded, behind-our-picket-fence, America-first definition of what it is to be American.

And now in the aftermath of Brexit and the ongoing debate about the Union, we in this country are having to consider our own relationship between being English and British.

Thankfully, London Fashion Week, taking place this weekend, is an area where the notion of Englishness, tainted as it has become for some by associations of jingoism and insularity, still holds appeal.

To the many foreign press and buyers at the shows, English sells. Bring on the traditional tropes of tweeds and pearls, lace and knitwear, raincoats and Royalty.

It’s a very narrow contribution to our identity but at least it’s positive and something to celebrate, rather than the isolated, confused, White Van Man vision of Englishness, currently on the National Theatre stage.