SUNNY OUTLOOK
Meet Martha Sitwell, a champion of sidesaddle riding and designer of chic equestrian fashion
A staunch believer in the power of reinvention, Martha Sitwell overcame a traumatic riding accident to become a sidesaddle champion, equestrian-fashion designer and the face of Royal Ascot. Here, she reveals how her early misadventures spurred her on to success
Martha Sitwell insists that she’s not an adrenalin junkie. But watch her hurtling over hedges riding sidesaddle on a hunt, her face spattered in mud and a cigarette gently balanced between her lips, and you can’t help but wonder. ‘I’m honestly not,’ she says, curled up in the woodpanelled living-room of her flat off Kensington High Street, two of her rescue dogs asleep in the corners. ‘I’m a really nervous passenger in the car, and I don’t ski – I remember being convinced as a four-year-old that I was going to disappear off the side of a mountain.’ Only on horseback does her racing mind begin to slow. ‘Normally I have 300 thoughts running through my head, but when you’re riding, you have to be completely focused on yourself and the horse – it’s a really intense form of relaxation.’
Now a passionate – and seemingly fearless – advocate for equestrian pursuits, as a young woman she looked likely to have a curtailed career in the saddle. Born Martha de Blank, she grew up in Norfolk and was a keen rider, until a catastrophic fall over a fence resulted in her breaking her neck and back aged just 13; her horse, Gem, also died. ‘He was the last one I had, and I didn’t ride again for years and years,’ she recalls. Her gilded life began to fall apart: her parents’ marriage unravelled, school was turbulent and she ended up living rough for a while following the breakdown of her relationship with her family, becoming a mother while she was still a teenager. (She and her son Conor, now a chef, remain very close, though he was brought up principally by her aunt and uncle.)
But Sitwell’s fortunes changed in 1999 when Vivienne Westwood scouted her, kick-starting a modelling career that saw her star in campaigns for brands including Alexander Mcqueen, Philip Treacy and Westwood herself, as well as becoming the face of Royal Ascot and a favourite model of Isabella Blow. Less than a decade later, she had married George Sitwell (of the famed literary family) and moved to his Northamptonshire estate.
At first, the new Lady Sitwell struggled with her status as a rural chatelaine. ‘I didn’t know anyone there and I was incredibly lonely,’ she says. ‘I loved keeping chickens and things, but there was a limit.’ Hunting, she realised, offered a fast-track to regaining a social life. So, having lost her nerve riding astride, she decided to try sidesaddle because it made her feel more secure and ‘strapped in’. ‘There were only three instructors left in the UK and amazingly one of them, Roger Philpot, was just 20 minutes from me,’ she remembers. ‘It took him three months to get me from sitting on a sidesaddle to hunting.’
Along with a clutch of other intrepid women, Sitwell helped put riding sidesaddle back in the spotlight, with a little help from Downton Abbey. She rode with the Ledbury Hunt on the Herefordshire and Gloucestershire border (‘the best season of my life’), the Blackmore & Sparkford Vale in Dorset and Somerset, and the Grafton in Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. ‘It’s much more common to see someone riding sidesaddle out hunting now, and I’m always thrilled when I do,’ she says. ‘It’s fantastic that
it’s having a resurgence and is going to be around for the next generation.’
More challenging than getting to grips with a new riding style, however, was finding a flattering habit to wear – and so her bespoke design company Sitwell & Whippet was born (the name is an allusion to her penchant for ‘long dogs’, but also a play on words for what happens when you get on a horse). ‘All of my pieces are made to enhance the waist, with their leg-of-mutton sleeves and full skirts,’ she explains. ‘And I steer away from synthetic fabrics. Properly layered wools and silks will keep you dry and warm in any weather.’ The sources of inspiration for her designs – all made on request for private clients – are varied, from Napoleon and Beau Brummell to Somerset farmers and Charles II. ‘I started with hunting gear, but I’ll do anything. I’ve even created a couple of outfits for men,’ she says. ‘Though for me as a woman, it’s all about the curve.’
In 2017, Sitwell created a collection of British-made hunting clothes for the brand Harry Hall, featuring a chic coat in a longer length. ‘Up until the 1930s, hunting attire was very elegant, but I think we’d really moved away from that in recent times. These short, boxy jackets are fine with a pair of elephant-ear breeches, but unless you’re Edie Campbell or one of the Manners girls, they’re not so hot on mere mortals in skin-tight breeches,’ she says. ‘I don’t see why you need to dress as a frump just because you’re out in the countryside.’
Today, she lives in London full-time following her separation from her husband in 2017 (she marked the occasion with a lavish ‘divorce party’ at 5 Hertford Street, attended by friends including the chef Gizzi Erskine and the actress Margo Stilley) and the end of her subsequent dalliance with Lord Dalmeny, the chair of Sotheby’s in the UK. Now ‘resetting the rhythm of her life’, she is busy planning the expansion of her Sitwell & Whippet range, with a possible ready-to-wear collection in the pipeline. One recent design, a pair of silk pyjamas, has ignited her imagination beyond the confines of the hunting field. ‘It’s the kind of piece you might wear with a pair of sandals to go dancing at Loulou’s, with wedges to Le Club 55 in Saint-tropez, or to lounge around in at home reading a book,’ she says. ‘Designing gives me huge joy. And I find it incredibly easy – I just draw what I wear and other people seem to want to wear it too.’ For Sitwell & Whippet commissions, email sitwellandwhippet@ gmail.com.