by Jilly Cooper
If there is one single class indicator where clothes are concerned it is colour. The upper classes tend not to wear crude, garish, clashing colours. Not for them the da-glo oranges or reds, the jarring lime greens and citrus yellows, the royal blues, mauves and cyclamen pinks. One thinks of the aristocrat dismissing the rating officer, coming out shooting ‘in his dinky little blue suit’, or a friend who was witheringly written orf as ‘the sort of girl who wears shocking pink in the country’. Mrs Nouveau-Richards can pore over The Tatler and Jennifer’s Diary, and find out exactly when and in what styles different clothes should be worn, but while the photographs go on being printed in black and white she’ll never get the colours quite right.
Traditionally, too, because the upper classes believe in supporting their own industries, they regard anything that’s lived—wool, leather, silk, cotton—as all right, but anything man-made—crimplene, polyester or plastic—as decidedly vulgar.
At a meeting of the Historic Houses Association, Clive Jenkins and Lord Montagu, the departing president, wore identical clothes—dark blue suits, slightly lighter blue plain shirts, and dark blue ties with red spots; the difference was that Clive Jenkins was dressed in man-made fibres. He looked somehow much shinier and less substantial.
The upper classes, as Michael Fish has said, also believe it is morally wrong to buy more clothes than you have to. So as clothes have to last they have to be conservative and of decent stuff. It is a point of pride for Harry at forty to be able to get into the same coat and trousers he wore at Eton.
The higher up the social scale you go, the taller and more finely boned people tend to be, because of diet, work patterns and extra vitamins over the years. Harry has no bum, Caroline no bum or bust; both are tall and thin, so their clothes, which have the advantage of being very well cut, tend to look good on them, and set them apart. Leanness, as Mrs Gaskell pointed out, is a great aid to gentility. Even if Georgie horrifies his father by buying an orf-the-peg suit, his etiolated figure and self-confidence will allow him to get away with it. Aristocrats, even if they live in London and have little opportunity to take exercise, seldom allow themselves to put on weight.
Harry Stow-Crat is therefore very conservative in his dress. But from the way he describes what he’s wearing— ‘black tie’ for a dinner party, ‘white tie’ for an official occasion, or a ‘morning coat’ for a wedding—you’d think he was going about half-naked. One aristocrat I know got caught out very badly in this way. He was going to spend a weekend at a very grand house in the country and asked his batman to pack his dinner jacket. It was only when he was dressing for dinner that he discovered his batman had taken him at his word and only put in the coat. In the end he was reduced to borrowing a pair of trousers from his host, which were midnight blue, half his size, and about three times too large in the waist. No one made any comment at dinner or afterwards.
Harry Stow-Crat’s dinner jacket is almost green with age. He would never call it a ‘dinner suit’ or have one in midnight blue, particularly in terylene with braiding. Georgie, however, might wear a different-coloured velvet tie, but not a waterfall of duck-egg blue frills like Jison Richards.
Harry, as we have said, would wear a dark suit in London, but he wouldn’t call it a ‘lounge suit’ or a ‘three-piece suit’ or a ‘business suit’. The buttons on the sleeve would undo, and there would be a real button-hole for a carnation in the lapel, which he could do up in bad weather on a button hidden under the lapel on the other side. He might still wear fly buttons rather than zips, to protect his member for carrying on the line, but Georgie would probably have a zip, just as he might easily wear a leather belt to hold up his trousers. Harry would wear braces, which he would take off before removing his coat. His shirts would be striped, checked, or plain coloured, and never have pictures or initials on them—initials on clothes are considered very vulgar. Harry would never wear a striped tie with a dark suit, but he might wear a Guards tie with a tweed coat in the country. Georgie probably wouldn’t bother to wear a tie at all, but it is interesting to observe that when the tieless fashion was at its height in the late ’seventies, girls started one-upping each other by wearing the old school, club and regimental ties their fathers and brothers had jettisoned.
Harry would wear one ‘han’k’rchif’ (not ‘hand-ker-cheef’) in his trouser pocket and another in his breast pocket—not up his sleeve. But it would not match his tie, and it would be casually arranged just to show a tip of a corner and a bit of fold. It would not be folded across in a white rectangle as though, as someone bitchily said, ‘You’d forgotten to post your pools coupon’ (although Prince Philip wears it this way), nor in a neat right angle, nor in a made-up mountain range on a piece of cardboard like Bryan Teale. Mr Definitely-Disgusting wears a handkerchief on his head at the seaside.
Pottering about at home, Harry would probably wear old corduroy (pronounced ‘cord’roy’) or whipcord trousers, and a tweed jacket, which he would refer to as a tweed coat, or, as he called it at Eton, a ‘change coat’. He would never use the expression ‘sports jacket’. He would call a blazer a boating jacket and tells Georgie he would have been thrown out of the Guards for saying ‘blazer’. He might occasionally wear a polo-neck sweater, but never in pastel colours or in white, and always in wool. He would call it a ‘polo-neck jersey’ because the upper classes think the words ‘jumper’, ‘sweater’, ‘pullover’, ‘slipover’, ‘woolie’ and particularly ‘cardi’ extremely vulgar. He would never wear a mackintosh in London, nor call it a ‘raincoat’ or, even worse, a ‘showerproof’. He would never carry an umbrella in the country (only vicars are allowed this privilege) except at point-to-points or anywhere where women might be dressed up and need cover—on the moors they can drown. The umbrella would be black and without a tassel. He would wear gum boots in green or black, but never call them ‘wellington boots’ or, even worse, ‘wellies’. If he wore an overcoat he would refer to it as a ‘coat’, or a ‘covert coat’ (pronounced ‘cover’ to fox the unwary).
If Georgie wore just a shirt and trousers, he would take off his tie, undo the top button and roll his sleeves up to below the elbow. Mr D-D would do the same except that he’d roll the sleeve above the elbow. Bryan Teale would leave his tie on and his shirt sleeves buttoned up. (What does it matter if his cuffs get dirty? Jen can drip-dry them in a trice tonight.)
If Harry wore a signet ring, which would not be de rigeur as he doesn’t need status props, it would have a crest and be on the little finger of his left hand. Georgie might wear a wedding ring merely to irritate the upper-middles who all wear signet rings with crests on their little fingers and think it’s awful to have rings, particularly with initials, on any other fingers.
Harry would probably still decant his cigarettes into a cigarette case, although Georgie wouldn’t bother. Not long ago an officer in the Guards got bawled out for offering the Duke of Gloucester a cigarette in a packet. ‘You’re not in the garage now,’ said his Adjutant in a sarcastic aside.
Mr D-D smokes his Woodbines between finger and thum to eke them out, and curled in the palm of the hand to hide them from the foreman. Howard Weybridge and Colonel Upward smoke pipes; Mr Nouveau-Richards smokes very expensive cigars and leaves the label on, like a signet ring; Georgie Stow-Crat would certainly smoke in the street if he felt like it. His mother would not. Harry Stow-Crat keeps his money in a ‘notecase’, not a ‘wallet’.
Gideon Upward, trying to be trendy but slightly out of date, would still be squeezing himself into jeans. He might wear a blazer but not with a badge, more likely a corduroy or a velvet coat, or last year’s denim which Samantha bought him; it has four buttons and a high neck and makes him feel slightly silly. Since Zacharias and Thalia went to boarding school he can’t afford to buy suits, so all his Christmas presents are chosen by Samantha, usually sweaters from Marks and Spencer, in colours which suit her and which she wears during the week, so they have two bumps in the front when he puts them on at the weekend. He has re
luctantly started to wear part-nylon socks, because Samantha shrinks his wool ones to Action Man size in a few weeks. He knows that shirt collars ought always to be worn inside a coat and a sweater, and he never wears a hat, although when he goes shooting occasionally his grander friends force him into a cap, saying, ‘You’ll be frightfully cold, Gideon.’
Howard Weybridge dresses straighter than straight, not unlike Colonel Upward. He wears regimental ties, golf-club ties, the Hurlingham Club tie and an old school tie if he’s got one. Occasionally he wears a paisley scarf, which he refers to as a ‘cravat’, with a brass scarf ring. At the pub he wears a very clean blazer with an Esher Rugby Club badge, and slightly too new cavalry-twill trousers, although the nearest he’s got to the cavalry is an hour’s horse ride through the pine trees in Oxshott woods. He has never gone in for wide trousers, but his suede ankle boots are slightly too ginger. When he goes to Twickerham he wears a sheepskin coat, often with brown fur, and an assortment of hats, Russian fur, flat caps, and deerstalkers.
A hat designed for shooting Scottish deer
Though Haywards be the only Heath he’s near
wrote Paul Jennings.
He wears huge riding macs, and his spectacles have no bottom rims to them. In bed he wears a red wool nightshirt from Bentalls, grandiosely called a ‘sleep coat’.
Mr. Nouveau-Richards wears too much jewellery—huge gold cuff-links, a large diamond ring and a huge gold watch. He likes wearing bow ties so he can show glittering studs on his shirts, but if he wears a tie he puts on a huge gold tie pin. In his early working-class days, like Mr Definitely-Disgusting, he wore a tie clip and sleeve garters. He wears a camelhair coat with a belt, and in the evening changes into a burgundy velvet smoking jacket, with his initials in gold on the breast pocket.
‘I am your demon lover in my new red sleep coat.’
Jison Richards, as a member of the telly-stocracy, wears three-piece suits in white with a black shirt and no tie, or very light blue suits with the jackets so waisted and with such long slits at the back that they look like miniskirts. He used to wear very fat, flamboyant ties borrowed from Wardrobe at the B.B.C. but the knot is getting slimmer. He often leaves his make-up on after a programme when he goes to the pub to remind people he’s a telly star.
The spiralist who is climbing very fast, but hasn’t got the same kind of money as Jison, studies the fashion magazines slavishly and co-ordinates carefully. He might select a neat check jacket to go with plain beige slacks, and a ‘wesket’ to match the slacks; the whole ensemble can double up as a business suit during the week. He’s also very keen on herring-bone suits, which, worn with a sporty cravat, will double up as a sports suit for leisure wear. He likes British accessories—a jaunty check cap matching the check insets of his high-button jacket or a Donegal tweed hat with the brim turned down worn with a matching coat and ‘holld-all’. He’s also heavily into luggage. Last year’s gold plastic bag on a coathanger has been replaced this year by a ‘travel robe’ in tartan which has a handle to enable him to carry all his co-ordinates vertical. Nattiness reigns.
Bryan Teale is dressed from top to toe in drip-dry clothes. Sometimes Bryan thinks Jen might put him through the washing machine under the setting for ‘whites lightly soiled’. Bryan wears burgundy crimplene slacks (which never fit because Jen brought them by mail order in the Daily Mail), rust cable-stitch cardigans and cavalry-twill-style trousers in brown/black/ navy/lovat/fawn in 100% washable polyester. He wears his rotary badge on his lapel. Instead of pants he wears tartan jockey shorts. He wears striped ties which the shop categorizes as a ‘Club tie’. Bryan also has a whole robe unit in the bedroom for his car wear, woolly hats, zip-up car coats, fake sheepskin coats for cold days, overalls to save his good clothes when he’s lying under the car, and driving gloves with holes in the back.
Gideon changes out of a suit into old clothes when he gets home or at the weekends. Mr D-D changes out of old clothes into one of Gideon’s old suits that Mrs D-D bought at a jumble sale. It is a bit shiny but still has plenty of wear in it. She likes a good fight at the jumble on the weekend. Indoors Mr D-D always removes his coat and sits in a waistcoat and collarless shirt; any shoes he wears inside the house will be called slippers. His bedroom slippers he calls ‘carpet slippers’. If he wears a shirt with a collar with a coat, he arranges the collar neatly outside the jacket. He always keeps his hat on in the pub.
Apart from the fact that Caroline Stow-Crat never wears man-made fibres except for stockings, it is far more difficult to tell the difference between her clothes and those of Mrs Weybridge. It is even more difficult to distinguish Fiona Stow-Crat from Sharon Definitely-Disgusting. Aware of the cruelty involved, Caroline reluctantly no longer wears her fur coat, which was a marvellous standby for London and in the evenings. Since sheepskin coats have sunk down the scale, the upper classes of both sexes wear a hideous quilted rubber coat called a ‘husky’, not unlike Mrs D-D’s dressing gown, except it is nylon and green or blue. Soon we can expect ‘husky knickers’ to keep out the cold. They sound as though they ought to be white and furry and matted with arctic snow, but actually turn out to be overtrousers.
Caroline tends to underdress. Except for a watch or a small brooch, nothing but pearls before sundown is her maxim. Her pearls have little knots between each pearl. (The world is divided into have-knots and have-nets.) At night she wears some very good, inherited jewellery, which adds a lot of light to her face; she would never wear modern jewellery, and particularly never refer to it as ‘costume jewellery’. After she’d been through her wild deb stage, and certainly after she was married, she wouldn’t show cleavages, or wear mini-skirts, whatever the fashion; nor would she wear see-through shirts. (She thinks the word blouse is very common).
Caroline would prefer the expression ‘coat and skirt’, and although Fiona might say ‘suit’, neither of them would ever say ‘two-piece’ or ‘costume’ or ‘skirt suit’. Caroline wears trousers, but never very tight, and never a trouser suit. Her shoes would be plain and never too high or brightly-coloured or decorated with bows or with peep toes. Wedge heels and platform heels and coloured boots, particularly drum majorette white boots, would also be out. She used to prefer the word ‘frock’ to ‘dress’, but since Samantha’s taken up ‘frock’ as being more old-fashioned and Kate Greenaway, Caroline’s swinging back to ‘dress’ again. Other expressions she doesn’t use are ‘ball gown’, ‘hostess gown’, ‘evening gown’, ‘house coat’ and ‘bathrobe’ instead of ‘dressing gown’. As she has very good legs, she doesn’t need the flattery of dark stockings, but if she did she’d wear navy blue with blue shoes, rather than black which she thinks a bit tarty.
Samantha is much more untidy in appearance. She is just emerging from her Third World ethnic phase and still has a sloppy, bra-less, long-straight-haired, intellectual earth-mother look. She’s not as good at staying on diets or as naturally thin as Caroline and found those kaftans and peasant dresses almost better than Gideon’s sweaters for covering up a multitude of tums.
At dinner parties she’s weighed down with ethnic jewellery picked up from various Oxfam or African project shops, which is the nearest she gets to abroad, now they’re so poor. The difference between the upper-middle classes and the lower-middle is admirably illustrated by Shirley Williams and Margaret Thatcher. As Rebecca West pointed out, Mrs Thatcher has one great disadvantage—she is a daughter of the people and looks trim as daughters of the people desire to be. Shirley Williams has such an advantage over her because she’s a member of the upper-middle classes and can achieve that distraught kitchen sink, revolting look that one cannot get unless one’s been to a really good school. The upper-middles tend to be untidy not only because they are more secure than the lower middles but because they like to look vaguely intellectual and because, unlike Caroline Stow-Crat, they don’t feel they need to set an example to anyone.
The middle-middles try to dress just like Mrs Thatcher, the Queen and Grace Kelly, very upper class
ical. Eileen Weybridge shops at Dickins and Jones, Peter Jones or Bentalls of Kingston. She wears velvet jackets over a shirtwaister pleated dress, or a blouse with a pussy-cat tie bow and a pleated skirt. When it rains she puts on a scarf decorated with snaffles and horses’ heads, which she thinks give it a very nice country look. She wears a camelhair coat with saddle stitching in slightly too dark a shade, and a brown melusine bowler hat for shopping. Her shoes are in slightly too orange a tan and she spends days and days finding a matching ‘handbag’ as she calls it. She rather lets the side down by buying an emerald-green trouser suit with a matching peaked cap for Twickenham. In the evening she wears a polyester floral shirtwaister bang on the knee. She would never show bare arms after thirty-five.
Mrs Nouveau-Richards, coming from working-class origins, likes to dress up whenever she goes out, even to the shops. In the evening she wears white or silver fox furs and a great deal of very flash modern jewellery, particularly diamonds. On her dresses she has lots of spangles and sequins, and her figure is as heavily corsetted as her ve-owell sounds but inclined to break out above and below her stays to give her a cleavage like the Grand Canyon and makes her straight skirts ‘rade’ up. She wears long coloured gloves and invariably very high-heeled shoes with straps round the ankles, and a spangled butterfly or a flower in her hair, which is peroxide blonde like Diana Dors.
Jen Teale, like Bryan, lives in drip-dry co-ordinates—little terylene tops which she’s always pulling down over the derrière of her terylene slacks when she is doing anything strenuous. (Mrs Nouveau-Richards talks about ‘botties’.) As she hates untidy hair she puts on one of those scarves with a fitted pleated centre for tying at the nape of the neck. She wears rain hats which match her raincoat and carries a plastic transparent concertina hood in her bag in case it rains. Everything is washed after one wearing and she never buys from jumble sales—’You don’t know who’s worn it’—or wears clothes bought in a sale until she’s ‘hand-washed’ them first. She always wears a bra and panti-girdle, not only to keep Bryan and others out but to make her figure as anonymous as possible. She’s very keen on capes, because they don’t reveal a single outline, and yet look neat. Mrs Whitehouse wore one recently when flying to America and was described in the Daily Mirror as ‘The Caped Crusader’. If Jen wears a transparent shirt, she always wears a full-length petticoat and a bra underneath, so all you see is rigging. Even when she relaxes in the evening her primrose brushed nylon housecoat is worn over all her underclothes. Although she’s not a catholic, she wears a gold cross round her neck to remind people she’s a ‘nice girl’. For weddings her ‘outfit’ is a navy crimplene two-piece trimmed with lemon, bought from the Littlewood’s catalogue. Her uniform with a summer dress is a long white orlon cardigan.
