From Edith Wharton's Lily Bart to Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, Truman Capote's Holly Golightly and F Scott Fitzgerald's Daisy Buchanan to Bertie Wooster, Scarlett O'Hara and Madame Bovary, there's no shortage of literary fashionistas. Virginia Woolf introduced us to Orlando, one of the world's more elegant cross-dressers. Hemingway gave us Brett, "damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a roaring yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey." I believe today we'd call Brett a gamine. Hell, she might even double for Alexa Chung.
So why was I - forgive me, Our Lady of Mariella Frostrup - expecting a sea of elasticated waistbands when I visited Hay last week? Possibly because last time I went, it was hedge-to-hedge, one-size-sort-of-fits-all garish slacks, often locked into a mutually destructive relationship with baggy, laddered jumpers so old they made Hay's ancient castle ruins look like Johnny-come-latelys. But then the latter only date back to about 1121.
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How this country's clothes sense has changed in half a decade. There are still printed trousers, but in florals or geometrics that don't look as though they've been suffering from a two-decades cycle of depression. Plenty of long, floaty skirts in sugar almond colours, too - and teensy neons. Stripes, favourite of off-duty fashion editors, are even more beloved of the Kindle-reading classes (even Hilary Mantel wore a stripy scarf). So is vintage. Safia Minney, founder of ethical clothing company People Tree, who took part in a debate on sustainable fashion, pointed out that Britain chucks away 1.5 million tons of clothing every year. Is it too much to hope those slacks are in a deep, dark pit?
Encouragingly, Minney and her co-panellists attracted a cross-generational audience, including 16-year-olds Lizzie Thurgate and Lily Fox, who came together, having pledged last year always to wear second-hand clothes. As Minney points out, "fashion, love or hate it, is a powerful vehicle for change."
Not that Hay has morphed into the Frieze Art Fair, with its acutely image-conscious, international art crowd, many of whom prepare for their turn in its tented corridors as they might for a red-carpet-come-catwalk. Hay is full of come-as-you-are book lovers, who happen, many of them, to dress rather stylishly. How they do that is as varied as the weather. Some look as if they're at Glastonbury, wellies, head-garlands and all. Others, especially teens, opt for the Dita Von Teese approach to make-up - plenty of scarlet lipstick and so what if they're in a field? Sensibly, no one fretted about wearing thick, dark tights in June - how else can you make a strapless muslin dress bearable?
Most uplifting of all was how good the older women look - well-dressed, but not overly dressed, with nary a trace of Botox. It-bags have their place, but you can't beat curiosity and a well-furnished mind.
Via: Hay Festival 2012: Street style
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