It’s a Friday evening in Parsons Green, and I’m standing in a pub garden surrounded by men sporting padded gilets. I’m here on assignment, taking notes on the scene – “sighthounds,” “Barbours,” “too many signet rings” – when a group of women in their 20s squeeze onto a nearby table with a bucket of house white and several thick-stemmed wine glasses. I quickly learn that they’re regulars at The White Horse, affectionately known as The Sloaney Pony, and have been since they turned 18. “This is where our parents used to hang out,” one says, her voice echoing the tones of a young Joanna Lumley. “Everyone you speak to tonight will have a house in the countryside.” I nod knowingly. Does that explain their attire? “Well, you won’t see anyone flexing their wealth with, like, designer belts here,” another chimes in, proudly sporting her mother’s cashmere crewneck and charity shop jeans.
Within an hour, and another bucket of white wine later, I find myself surrounded by a new generation of Sloane Rangers. Their style, almost 50 years after the term first emerged alongside a young Lady Diana Spencer in pie-crust shirts and pearls, is once again inspiring how we dress. So, in the midst of the current political shift, why are the dusty wardrobes of Britain’s upper class suddenly so chic?
Let’s rewind to 1975. Journalists Ann Barr and Peter York first identified the Sloane Ranger, a term that would later inform The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook (1982). This seminal work of social observation dissected the shopping and drinking rituals of a boisterous, tweedy class of Brits. Their natural habitat? Knightsbridge, South Kensington, Chelsea, and various shires. The Handbook was a resounding success, and crucially, highly amusing. A brief taste of Barr and York’s maxims: it’s considered common to say the word “common”; one should cry at carols, but never at funerals; life’s small events should be exaggerated (the fridge breaking down is a “major disaster”), while its big events should be understated (crashing the Volvo estate is a “spot of bother”).
The Henrys and Carolines of southwest London, as detailed in the Handbook, had old-fashioned tastes in food, interiors, and clothes – a reflection of their privileged upbringings. Think wax jackets, riding macs, woollen reefers, and loden overcoats – all styles that flourished in the autumn/winter 2024 collections in a variety of muddy, country colors.
There’s no better garment to capture this season’s “gin-in-a-Thermos” mood than the coat. Consider Chloé’s cape-topped trench coats, Max Mara’s cozy borgs, Prada’s buttoned-up lodens, and Bottega Veneta’s cocoon-sleeved peacoats. Laura Andraschko, one of London’s most insightful designers, originally from Berlin but now residing in Notting Hill, showcased equestrian jackets with cartoonish pagoda shoulders, Wellington boots, and “My Boyfriend Went To Eton” slogan tees in her spring/summer 2025 collection. Her presentation, held at a riding center in west London, was unequivocally titled “Sloane Ranger.”
“It felt important to explore and critique this group given the current socio-economic climate and to challenge the perceptions of class, privilege, and elitism,” the 27-year-old designer explains. A valid point, though I wonder if the broader proliferation of Sloane-adjacent styles on this season’s catwalks is less about the hierarchies of dress and more about the qualities associated with traditional British clothing.
“Made to last, both in style (never high fashion, thus never out of fashion) and in material,” as Barr and York noted. “Tweeds, wools, silks, cottons; natural and dateless fibers.” This explains the attire of my fellow pub-goers. It also could be the prologue to Daniel Lee’s autumn/winter 2024 collection at Burberry. “We began in the archives and the mills of Lochcarron and Donegal,” the designer explained in the show notes. “I wanted to take a traditional approach to fabric and how each piece is made.”
Enter moleskin trench coats, sherpa-lined barn jackets, and baggy off-green parkas worn on the runway by models like Edie Campbell and Maya Wigram, styled with tartan scarves, shin-length skirts, and knee-high gumboots. It’s as if dressing were designed for bundling labradors into the back of a Vauxhall Astra on an exeat weekend in the Highlands. Or, in the case of Silvia Venturini Fendi in Milan, corgis. The designer described her autumn men’s show, which anchored monogrammed wax jackets and fisherman coats to pleated skorts, hiking socks, and leather Wellies, as having “a Balmoral look.”
And at the time of writing, Mrs. Prada had just unveiled Miu Miu’s Miu Balmoral, a series of pop-up stores inspired by British style, described by the house as “conservative and rebellious, versatile and individual.”
“It goes back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Britain was known for producing tailored woollens and tweeds for classic field sports,” says fashion historian Liz Tregenza. “Those designs were exported internationally as being quintessentially British, elements of which come back time and time again.”
It’s true. Growing up in west London, there were few things I aspired to more than being cast in one of Jack Wills’s seasonal “handbooks,” circa 2009, filled with shoots resembling decadent countryside parties. More recently, Vogue has reported on the revival of rugby polos, boat shoes, and those love-them-or-loathe-them red socks. We could call it “timeless,” I suppose, but perhaps “edgeless” is more fitting? The notion of heritage feels smoothly enticing at a moment when so many trends feel disposable.
The new-era appeal of the retro Sloane overcoat isn’t about wanting to look posh. It’s a desire for a braced-for-anything attitude, something the rain-soaked Sloanes excel at. “Caroline,” the Handbook reads, “still believes in the Good Coat.” I like that. Because who among us hasn’t longed for a coat that can withstand both the elements and the passage of time? A Good Coat feels essential as the months turn crisp.
I have personal fantasies of strolling around the city in a Good Coat of my own – a murky olive, wax-cotton bomber from Miu Miu’s latest collection – that I hope will see me through several winters in countless pub gardens, splitting bottles of cheap white wine. Just perhaps not at The White Horse in Parsons Green.
