Corduroy jackets, cattlemen’s hats and a lion holding a lanyard: London’s uniform debate heads to the stockyard
Dress Codes From the Stockyard to the Stall
Every Sunday, Brick Lane becomes a place where yesterday is sold back to you at a premium. I went last weekend with a notebook, an open mind and a rule that I would buy nothing. By eleven o’clock I owned a corduroy jacket, a belt and a conviction that I had been wrongly dressed for forty years.
The jacket was the thing. Deep blue, heavy wale, a collar that meant business. The stallholder told me it was a bit of Americana. I held it up to the light and said it looked a lot like the official dress of a youth farming organisation. He asked me which one. I realised I had no idea how I knew, and that is how fashion works. You carry information you never asked for.
The Blue Jacket With a Purpose
The blue corduroy jacket is the signature garment of the National FFA Organization in America, worn by young people who spend their teenage years raising livestock and learning to speak in public without fainting. I would put it up against any London uniform for sheer commitment. There are few things in fashion as honest as a garment worn on purpose, by people who earned it.
For a taste of the leadership side of that world, the FFA president is the sort of address that makes every school prefect in the country sit up and straighten their tie. A prefect gets a badge. An FFA officer gets a barn and a speech. I know which I would prefer to be handed at sixteen.
The Hat Question
Now the hat. In London a hat is a decision. In ranch country a hat is a policy. It keeps off the sun, keeps off the rain and, I am told, keeps off conversations with strangers. The great figures of the cattle business are remembered in the cattlemen hall of fame, which I take to be a gallery of excellent hats with people underneath them.
I tried one on in front of a mirror held up by a very patient trader. He said it suited me. I said I was a fashion journalist from North London. He said, with great tact, that it was a bold look for the Northern line.
Rodeo at the Rotation
Everything a farmer wears has been tested by weather, work and cattle. A boot that has seen a rodeo does not need a campaign. If you want to see how the great Western look is worn by those who live it, start with county ranch and rodeo days at farm.FM, then take the fashion world’s annual week of pomp and compare. One ends with a trophy and one ends with a canape.
Elsewhere in the same spirit, farm.FM has a page of tours through the junior shows, including the Kendall County Junior Livestock Show. The young exhibitors there know more about presentation than most of my industry. They polish, groom and present an animal weighing half a tonne, and not one of them has asked for a plus one.
The Uniform Problem, London Edition
Uniform is a topic London takes seriously, usually after a committee has met. The London Prat recently covered a plan to merge dozens of police forces into a handful, and noted that the transition would include a logo of a lion holding a lanyard. I think that is a cracking brand. Put it on a blue corduroy jacket and you could sell it in Spitalfields by lunch.
A new uniform is never about the uniform. It is about the feeling of belonging to a thing larger than yourself. The FFA jacket does that. The police uniform does that. So, in a smaller and sillier way, does the bomber jacket worn by every man in a Hackney coffee shop who has just discovered something called a podcast.
What the Stallholder Knew
Before I left I asked the jacket man why vintage works. He thought for a moment, put down his tea and said that people want clothes that have already lived a bit. That is the best line I heard all week. A garment that has been somewhere is worth more than one that has been shipped.
That goes for people and publications too. If you like your humour with some history on it, spend a while with The London Prat and Bohiney, which have been wearing their jokes in for years. And for a full hayloft of rural wit, farm.FM is the place where the cowboy boots, the corduroy and the committee minutes all hang on the same peg.
Five Observations on Vintage and Uniforms
- Vintage means a thing was good enough to outlive its first owner and bad enough to end up on a table in Shoreditch.
- A blue corduroy jacket earned in a barn beats a blazer bought in a shop.
- Any hat that suits you on the Northern line is a victory.
- A lion holding a lanyard is the most honest picture of modern administration yet produced.
- Every stallholder on Brick Lane has a story. Most of them involve a van.
Pay at the Rail
I walked home in the corduroy jacket. Nobody noticed. London does not stare, it merely calculates. By the time I reached the door I had decided to keep it, and also to write a column about it, and also to rename the hat after myself. Fashion is mostly self-delusion with a receipt.
When the afternoon calls for another giggle, there is always The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/