DRESS THE PART
Branching out into country attire can be a daunting prospect, but sartorially savvy Patrick Galbraith, Editor of Shooting Times, shares some expert advice on his choice of iconic country garb
There was a girl at university – in the year above, actually – who once took me out for dinner. I knew her younger brother well and had met her when I’d been down to stay with him in Devon to go fishing. It was a nice idea but she didn’t call again. I recall little about what we ate or what we talked about except for one snippet. She was studying philosophy and was going through a Nietzsche phase. “Has a woman who knew she was well dressed ever caught a cold?” she quoted at me. I remember thinking it was curiously practical advice from the great German intellectual but have since relied on it when spending hundreds of pounds on rabbit-fur hats. It was only yesterday when I looked up the quote that I realised I’d fundamentally misheard it. In my memory it was “well-dressed women don’t catch colds”, rather than “a woman who knew she was well dressed”. I suspect Friedrich – not a keen countryman? – was articulating something complex, but whatever, the point still stands. Woman or otherwise, dress well to keep out the cold, and dress even better when you’re wandering in the country or you’re at a rural gastropub with a pack of winds howling at the old oak door. An overweight Edinburgh lawyer I used to know once told me, after his wife had left him, that where weak men see disasters, fine men see opportunities. It was a cold February night when my rusty Porsche 944 was broken into. The only thing they stole was my suede flat cap from the glovebox. In truth, it had never served me well in the rain, and the following morning I cycled over to Lock & Co. – the world’s oldest hat shop – with Friedrich’s misremembered words in mind. For my money, Lock’s currently leads the way when it comes to flat caps. It isn’t the stuffy place it once was, and the things they’re doing with herringbone weaves, in all sorts of hues, as exhibited in the likes of the Tremelo, work just as well on Hampstead Heath as on one of the country’s smartest grouse moors. Bates is another option, of course, but the Editor of Country Life wears one of theirs, and we’re two sartorial ships navigating our way through very different waters. Obviously, there’s more to rural millinery than the flat cap. My uncle is never without his deerstalker, but for 20 years he did actually work as a deer stalker, and without the cred you risk Sherlock Holmes jibes.
“Has a woman who knew she was well dressed ever caught a cold?” she quoted at me. I remember thinking it was curiously practical advice from the great German intellectual but have since relied on it when spending hundreds of pounds on rabbit-fur hats.
Moving below the waist, you’d be mad to head to the country after the leaves start turning without a pair of breeks. Tweed is the original performance fabric. Woven from wool, it stays warm when wet and is hard-wearing. It’s said the term is a misnomer, originating when an Englishman misread the Scots word ‘tweel’. He doubtless took a punt, having heard of that great salmon river. In the 1840s, when Victorians fell in love with country sports, the interest in tweed soared, with grand mills opening in sheep country where wool was readily available. Tweed breeks are as popular as ever, and John Sugden, of Highland tailor Campbell’s of Beauly, has observed people taking a turn for the old-fashioned. The plus four is now back in vogue and is fast drawing level with the plus two in the popularity stakes. Both numbers refer to the amount of tweed, in inches, that hangs below the knee. Baggier breeks were traditionally worn by deer stalkers but are now widely seen across the sporting field. My father went through a stage of wearing corduroy plus twos for gardening. He’d never known comfort like it, he said, but my mother was worried the neighbours would talk, and one night they disappeared. While legwear remains traditional, jackets are at the coalface of sartorial innovation. I know a few sporting parsons who still wear tweed jackets but waterproof and breathable fabric is the order of the day. The innovation kick really started in 1993 when an ex-tennis coach who’d been knocking around in California returned to Britain to take on the family agri-supplies business. Corry Cavell-Taylor was shooting at Rockingham Castle in his old waxed Barbour. He recalls that when the north wind started blowing, his mind turned to a recent skiing holiday he’d been on and the greatest realisation of his life came to him: why can’t shooting jackets, he wondered, also have GORE-TEX linings? The following day he approached Hubert Schöffel, scion of that Bavarian clothing brand, to suggest they work together. “The rest,” he told me, as we sat drinking turmeric tea in his Oakham office, “is history.” Since then, the likes of Musto have followed suit, and there are countless Scandinavian offerings (I’m seldom without my Sasta), but they don’t have the cut of the Schöffel Ptarmigan. The latest iteration, by the way, is the best yet.
Lock & Co. Hatters Turnberry tweed flat cap £175.00
Campbell’s of Beauly plus twos £205.00
Schöffel Ptarmigan Pro II Coat Forest £599.95
In the same way that everyone wore a Barbour, the British were never without Hunter wellies. I used to get mine as ‘factory seconds’ in Dumfries, where they were made until 2008. The world is different now, and Hunter has evolved into a brand that’s a more common sight at festivals than on river banks. Aigle, in terms of wellies, has ultimately taken the top spot when it comes to price, durability and comfort, but in parallel to the growing popularity of the plus four, the traditional leather boot is back. As an ice cream magnate said to me in Gloucestershire last year, while we were talking grey partridges: “You ought to look after your feet, and boots do it best.” He was a Meindl man; I prefer Scarpa. The former are wide, whereas the latter are better for pretty little feet. If I was going to fork out, I’d probably go for Brandecosse, which is at the forefront of smart leather boot-making and was set up in Dumfriesshire, by a local boy, the same year that Hunter set sail for China. I remember reading an exchange, in the letters pages of a sporting periodical, about people no longer wearing ties when participating in country sports. An elderly Labrador owner felt it was truly the end, whereas a radical young land agent reckoned time was up for the tie. What he didn’t mention is that, without one, you can wear a turtleneck. There’s no getting away from the truth that buying good jumpers is expensive. But I’ve long thought that it’s like ripping off a plaster – just get it done. Pringle, currently, has real chic charm, and their blue cashmere turtleneck is a jumper for all occasions. Going chunkier, The Hawick Cashmere Company has a thick roll neck in oatmeal that would be the perfect thing for all that grayling fishing you do in December, when it’s so cold that the water freezes on your rod guides. Some months ago, I bumped into Emma, daughter of the owner of Hawick Cashmere, who told me that her brother is setting up an outpost in Milan. “Scottish cashmere in Italy... now that’s quite a thing,” I said to her in wonder. “Of course,” she replied, “well-dressed Italian women can’t get enough of British country style.” But as for whether they don’t catch colds, she wasn’t certain.