The age of beige
Bella Pollen on Jaeger's 'new' look: old-fashioned tailoring made sexy With so many things in the world designed to make you angry, it seems pointless to get worked up about a colour, but I can't help it — I have a thing about beige. It conjures up support tights for Scottish pensioners, ankle bandages and cheap hotel lobbies. Granted, French and Italians manage to look all exquisite and Louis Vuittonesque in it. However, your average Englishwoman dressed in beige more resembles something rolled in breadcrumbs, or worse — embalmed. But colour isn't my only prejudice. I don't just loathe beige. I fear it. I fear it in the same way that women, no longer in their first flush, worry about arthritis or the onset of Alzheimer's. This is because beige is not merely a colour; it's a conspiracy that creeps up on you as the years go by. Sisters, trust me when I tell you that beige is a danger to society and until it can be eradicated, be vigilant and stamp it out wherever you find it.
So why the random diatribe? It's been suggested that the new place to shop for we elegantly ageing baby-boomers is Jaeger. Yes, that's right — Jaeger, that staid old matron of the high street. Well, call me paranoid if you must, but surely everyone knows that Jaeger is practically the CIA headquarters of beige.
Dear God, you are surely thinking, enough already. Forget beige and Jaeger. Wear pink! Head for Miss Selfridge. And of course you're right, but the issue of 'fashion age' has got me thinking. I love the high street, really I do, and I'm all for dressing as young as you feel etc. But I am also well aware that the day will come when my son brings his girlfriend home for dinner and she'll be sporting the same Topshop dress as me except that she'll be 82 THE SPECTATOR 13 October 2007 wearing hers over lean bare legs, while mine will be optimistically belted over jeans to hide a burgeoning bum. Let me assure you — it won't matter what's on the menu that night, the taste in my mouth will be mutton and lamb for weeks to come.
So is 40 the new 20 or does there ever come a time to grow up? I don't know the answer, but the question brings me smartly up to the glass facade of Jaeger's enormous flagship store in Regent Street. I must have walked by these windows 100 times over the years and seen nothing but my own fashion snobbery reflected back at me, but one glance at the funky Seventiesinspired display suggests that vis-a-vis this most English of fashion houses, it is I who am hopelessly out of date and not the other way round.
Like so many mid-range brands, Jaeger got left behind in the mass-market boom of the 1990s. Panicked, it tried a quick fa of high-profile designers and big-name models but fashion salvation just doesn't come that easy.
The conundrum for any label is that season in, season out, it must dream up hundreds of ways of changing its base product without pissing off its core customer. Throw in the intensely complicated emotions surrounding the way a woman dresses and you begin to appreciate what a truly whimsical gamble fashion is.
Updating a brand is an especially risky business. A slot machine where payout depends on simultaneously lining up those motifs of value, excellence and style — but these are exactly the strengths, according to chief executive Belinda Earls, which have historically defined the company. Under her stewardship, a savvy in-house design team has been given access to Westminster library, where a 125-year-old archive of iconic illustrations and patterns is proving a rich source of inspiration. Earls claims to refer to Jaeger's heritage rather than play on it, but it seems to me, with its raincoat manufacturing in Manchester, a chairman called Harold and the irresistible soundbite that Ernest Shackleton wore Jaeger longjohns on his Antarctic expeditions, it's precisely this Englishness that feels fresh right now.
In store are some seriously covetable pieces. Graphic prints, marabou shrugs, patent-leather boots and the most glorious double-sided cashmeres. Aimed broadly at the 30-plus market, fitted on women with actual breasts and hips, this is oldfashioned tailoring made sexy. Best of all is the quality — in material, design, cut and attention to detail, all superb.
Dr Gustav Jaeger, founder of the brand, was convinced that if you wore his natural fibres close to your skin, you'd live a healthier, longer life. So for the rest of you beige conspiracy theorists out there, it looks like it's finally time to come in from the cold.
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