Country life
Vanity affair
Leanda de Lisle
Iam not surprised that a covert study conducted by the Martini drinks company found that men are the vainer sex. Twice as many men as women were caught admiring themselves in front of the mirrored posters they placed in cities up and down the coun- try. If Martini had placed their posters in villages the contrast between the sexes would have been even greater. Country- men, like birds of paradise, have the finer plumage. This is particularly true in the autumn when the hunting and shooting season is in full swing.
It is difficult to tell if a woman has been given the privilege of wearing hunt buttons. If you peer closely at the dark jacket she wears out hunting you might notice that her equally dark buttons now have some silver initials on them — but that is all. However, you can spot a man who has been similarly honoured from three fields `Don't ask me, ask your father. His dress sense is so much better than mine.' away. He will be sporting a coat in bottle green or brilliant red, with a white or claret-coloured collar and sparkling gold buttons. Many have a tailed evening ver- sion to wear at hunt balls and some have a dinner-jacket version as well. Not to be outdone, those who are not entitled to hunt buttons are increasingly taking up wearing smoking jackets in plum or petrol-blue velvet. Hosts will even speci- fy 'smoking jackets' as the dress for dinner — which leaves the women floundering. We have party dresses and old corduroys, but very little in between. American and European men encourage their wives to spend money on their clothes as they believe their dress reflects their status. Englishman prefer to concentrate on their own appearance, which, I suppose, explains the almost Masonic rules that appear to govern the look of their suits and shoes.
You can be sniffed at for having three buttons on your cuffs, and grey shoes are like the mark of Cain. Furthermore, there is the matter of when to wear what. My husband is happy to see me wear a tweed suit in London, but he would rather go swimming in his than do the same. Mind you this may be just an excuse for having more suits. I'm always being told bespoke suits are really frightfully cheap because they last 20 years — but it's not surprising that they last that long if you insist on hav- ing a different one for every possible occa- sion. I am so outraged that Peter doesn't get to wear his tweed suit more that I am considering throwing a Sunday lunch party especially for it.
His shooting suit, at least, sees some action. Women who shoot, unlike those who hunt, wear similar clothes to the men, but here, too, we remain the dowdier sex. For while the men wear gay socks in mus- tard yellow or partridge red, the women appear to be fearful of being told off for frightening the birds and stick to camou- flage green. To cap it all, so to speak, there is the matter of hats. It's true that some women wear elegant Tyrolean hats when shooting, but most of those who come along to watch wear head-scarves that make them look like East European crones.
`Ah, ha,' I hear you cry, 'but what about all the hats women wear for weddings or Ascot?' Well, Ascot is more London cock- tail party than anything. And as for wed- dings, you can tell country women aren't used to wearing hats by the way they plonk them on the back of their heads. You'd never see a man doing that, but then they wear hats all the time. They have a top hat for weddings and another to hunt in. They have flat caps, boaters, panamas and tril- bys, just to mention a few. However, things are changing. Country women now work and can afford to buy their own clothes and accessories. In the new millennium, we'll be putting diamond collars on the Labrador. That is, if male vanity can stand the competition.
Previous page
