Why do we love all things vintage?
In a mocked-up Main Street in the middle of a field in Sussex, several strikingly well-dressed women are queueing impatiently for admission to the catwalk show in the Fashion Pavilion. Some are clad in the khaki uniform of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (the famous Fanys), some are in land-girl slacks with their hair knotted inside red bandannas. Others are squeezed into tight rayon skirts that accentuate their Monroe hips, or floral cotton blouses with embroidered trim that their grandmothers might have considered a little fussy back in 1948.
Run your eye along the line of beauties, and you notice not everyone has gone for a Forties theme. Mad Men-style floral frocks with belted waists from the late 1950s are popular. Hobble skirts and polka-dots are everywhere, as are white gloves and teeny hats, like sequinned skull-caps clamped to the side of marcelled heads. Sixties-chick paisley mini-dresses compete with white PVC coats and Courrèges boots for the title of Most Authentic King's Road Look Circa 1966. There are even some boob tubes and fluorescent leggings from the 1980s, worn by skinny teenagers – to whom, of course, they represent the quaintly old-fashioned style of their parents' generation.
Not everyone is waiting for the catwalk show in this huge field in the grounds of Goodwood House. On the main stage, 500 yards away, the retro-rocker Alvin Stardust is knocking the crowd dead with "My Coo Ca Choo", unheard on the airwaves since 1973. A DJ called Simon the Preacher is manning the ones and twos in the Let It Rock tent, while a sextet of white, urban, soul-jazz-funk exponents called The Filthy Six are conjuring the old 1960s Blue Note sound on the Soul Stage. Devotees of British cinema are catered for with a 2pm screening of the Ealing Studios classic, The Lavender Hill Mob and, in the Tanqueray Torch Club, chaps in ginger moustaches and their petticoated lady friends are jiving to the boogie from the delectable Laura B and the Moonlighters.
Welcome to the world of Vintage, the style revolution that's been sweeping the nation for a few years – a counterblast to the domination of designer labels and high street convention – and, more specifically, welcome to Vintage at Goodwood, the inaugural music-and-clothes festival on the Duke of Richmond's estate near Chichester, West Sussex, managed by his son Charles, Earl of March. It's a massive enterprise, spread over three days and involving music events, fashion shows, art installations, classic English movies, vintage cars, a fun fair, a circus and an astonishing number of visitors unselfconsciously dressed in crêpe frocks and plus-fours.
Goodwood has been a name in the festival diary for some years for its annual Festival of Speed (racing cars) and its Goodwood Revival (vintage cars, 1940s-60s). This is the first time it has embraced rock'n'frocks. "When we started the Revival," says Charles March, "what amazed me was how directly people became involved with it. We wanted to see if we could use it in a different way, to create something a bit edgier, more arty and cultural, to bring music and fashion together. For me, one of the most exciting things is that the people become the show."
He formed a partnership with Wayne Hemingway, the designer behind the Red or Dead label, who, with his wife, Gerardine, masterminded the look of the festival. "There are lots of vintage weekender festivals," explains Hemingway, "which celebrate a single niche – rockabilly, say – and they're usually held in grim seaside resorts. This festival brings everything together. We wanted to celebrate the gamut of British creativity – music, fashion, art and design, film, food – and give people a chance to dress up and be glamorous. The coverage has been fantastic. El Pais [the Spanish newspaper] said we had built 'a city in a field'. Not quite, but we've done a lot more than put some burger vans in a muddy meadow."
Indeed. The festival's centrepiece is the Main Street, down which punters stroll, gazing at the two-storey façades on either side. There's a miniature Fortnum & Mason, a bonsai Veuve Clicquot, a mignon Bonhams auction house (where pop-culture memorabilia is going under the hammer, along with some jewels once owned by Jacqueline Onassis). Mocked-up bars feature trompe l'oeil pictures of knitting-pattern models posing in the windows. An early portrait of the Rolling Stones in about 1962, looking pleased as Punch in their sensible new grey suits with fur collars, dominates the skyline.
drive from www.independent.co.uk