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? Does leaving the city 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-and-avoid-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.
