According to the colour supplements and the fashion mags (and all those other mysterious forces that proclaim how we’ll all be wearing 50s tea dresses and lumberjack shirts this season), horses are this year’s fashion phenomenon.
Apparently, anyone who’s anyone now spends all of his or her spare time mucking out, preferably at his or her parents’ country estate, or at the little place in West Sussex where that nice couple (he’s a cook, she’s a groom) keeps everything ticking over marvellously while the children are in school and mummy and daddy are scraping a living out of commodities.
It’s all tied in with autumn’s fashion swoonfest for jodhpurs and shiny boots and strong shouldered black jackets. I haven’t heard anyone mention riding crops and velvet hats yet, but I’m sure that’s coming.
This is all well and good, and you know how I love a horse, but I can’t help commenting that as fashion accessories go, your average horse is a lot more expensive to maintain than your average Prada bag.
Still, I’m not complaining. It’s nice to be on the cutting edge of a lifestyle trend for a change. Even if it is completely by mistake.
It’s like when librarian chic comes along every few years and skinny 17 year olds are pictured looking cool in dowdy clothes that cost more than I earn in a month.
i’m guilty. i’ve been looking, specifically, for a forest green velvet saddlebag.
According to my mother’s latest Vogue, the ‘military’ look is back too (they call your horse look ‘outdoors’). I’m looking forward to slipping into a Battle of Waterloo style jacket, complete with epaulettes and gold buttons and colours that would be considered ‘camo’ if you were battling for a scrap of wasteland on Mars.
Brilliant. This is the third season I can get away with my equestrian style boots, topped with tea dress and doublebreasted overjacketcoat. Yesssss!
Respect.
I’ll never forget the first day of shame felt while walking across Islington to collect kids from school in my riding kit. I had on long boots, pale jods, white (rainproof) riding jacket and felt super conspicous. Honestly I think a builder even whistled, and then a mum at the school took a long, surprised look at me and said… “you look nice”. And I laughed with relief for the get-out-clause that told her I was neither mad, nor super rich, nor posh but simply a woman chasing the equestrian fashion look. Phew.
It was Islington. Of course you looked nice.