Vırginia Chadwyck-Healey What to wear... in the country (or town)

Make your wardrobe go the distance with pieces that work in both urban and rural settings

It can be hard to find outfits that fit the bill for multiple scenarios. Can the tweed coat you want to wear for a rural jaunt also work for the city? Must leaving town mean donning plus fours and blending in with the scenery?

Today’s two country-wear brands might seemingly cater to a backdrop of rambling hills and babbling brooks, but I want to prove they work just as well for town or country. The small and perfectly formed Northumberland brand Bella Hoskyns offers personable service, great fits and fabric with a weighty quality that doesn’t restrict: think collared shirts, wide-leg trousers and loafers – very Katharine Hepburn. Arabella Hoskyns-Abrahall launched the firm after finding a dearth of clothing options for women when joining her husband on country pursuits. “Bertie was always very keen on shooting and I hated always looking like a misfit in men’s small-size clothing,” she says.

Hoskyns set about designing a gilet, asked a local dressmaker to whip it up and the response from friends was just the trigger she needed. “The gilet I sell now on my website is the very same design from way back then,” she says. It is also the one I’m wearing here today: a very well designed corduroy creation in a fresh, uplifting shade of jade, with a velvet-lined collar and ample pockets for Murray Mints.

The trousers – named Hepburn – with their accentuated high-waist fit, are also excellent. Above all, they are lined. This is a detail I could sing about from the rooftops: it makes all the difference to how we move, drive, sit, bend down to tie a shoe lace and simply go about our day. For those of you still fiendishly obsessed with the dress trend, I implore you to try these.

Alongside the waistcoat, I’ve brought in a striped classic: a jumper with a frilled collar from Wyse London. This one is cashmere, but I’m sure you all own a striped top of some kind. You also probably have some tweed, checked, tartan or corduroy country attire in your wardrobe. Do they work together? Yes! In a throw-it-on-andavoid-matchy-matchy kind of way they do. And if anyone asks (and they won’t), your answer is that you are “embracing eclectic”. The word “eclectic” saves us fashion writers a lot these days, but you can feel the concept permeating everything from clothing to interiors, food and hotels: a mash-up of styles and eras, coming together in a new wave of, well, eclecticism.

If you have not heard of the country clothing brand Troy London, head to its website and throw yourself down a rabbit hole of great parkas, wax jackets and sueded gilets. The lightweight jacket I am modelling above proved to be perfectly at home when worn on the banks of the River Test this summer (it is now my lucky jacket, since I was wearing it when I caught my first Test trout). Likewise the country came to the city when I wore it to London just last week, along with a denim shirt, neat cropped trousers and some loafers. The drawstring waist is a great touch: neatly nipped in for the country, a bit looser for my own boyish style in the city, or vice versa, and the red thread detailing gives the khaki a cosmopolitan edge.

This my way of making my wardrobe go the distance – quite literally. It’s commendable to dig deep and wear those garments that are normally intended for one particular location in another setting entirely. The style rules can be there to be broken; something that is happening more and more. Indeed, Hoskyns recalls: “I remember getting off the train at King’s Cross and seeing one of my waistcoats swishing along in front of me. It made my year!”

She says men too are grappling with the city/country blend: “Even the [men’s] Bertie waistcoat started off as a fully practical, outdoor rustic style, but now guys tell me they wear them to work on dress-down days in the city.”

You can take the guys and girls out of the country...