In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it,

You’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter Parade

Easter has gone, and a wet and miserable one it was for many people. I thought of Easters past, London’s Van Horse Parade, and, yes, a new hat, or new trimming. I am totally bemused by the current state of ‘The Rag Trade’ and what it now means. I did a conference on the ‘Trade’ in Brittany. From the growing of the flax, shearing of the sheep, to the pointed irons to make the pleats in the lace bonnets it employed a high percentage of the population. Here, in Lyon, in centuries past it was the world hub of the silk industry.

I picked up a fashion mag here – hundreds of designer garments. Some I would love to own, but there were none that seemed practical to wear, even going up the red carpet to receive your Oscar. I did a month’s Grooming course at Lucie Clayton, and became highly critical of any woman in the street, often Bond Street. A bewildering number of shampoos are on offer, inundated by TV publicity giving you long and luscious locks. Yet many women, young in particular, seem to have unhealthy hair. On line, cheap stores, markets, thousands of dresses, often cheap, pretty and smart, yet it is difficult to find somebody I would call ‘chic’. Going to church (France) one Sunday I had my waist-length hair loose. I felt somebody touching my head, looked round, a man from the local psychiatry hospital (completely harmless) was stroking it. People were going to remonstrate. Poor man, he said ‘It was so beautiful I had to stroke it’. An Afghan hound’s silk coat would have provoked the same reaction.

My brother-in-law was a Professor at Durham University. We were there at Easter, and I insisted on going to the Cathedral. It was the time of the embarrassing bishop, who denied the Virgin Birth etc. Cathedral packed, BBC top correspondent thrusting his microphone in people’s faces. I was standing on a tombstone, tapped him on the shoulder, and said ‘Why do you not ask this question?’ Which was ‘Did you come to the service today just to see what the bishop would do?’ He turned his mike on me. I was wearing a  fabulous white wool cloak with a cape, and a red beret. I was top story on BBC1 that night.

We were members of the snooty ‘Farmers’ Club’. There was a ‘do’ every summer. Lord Hives, the then chairman, held a cocktail party on the terrace of the House of Lords. I loved my dress, black georgette with a huge white Puritan collar, and a little black pill-box hat with a veil and huge white rose. I was the only woman with a hat. Mortified, I was about to consign it to the Thames. Lord Hives said ‘Don’t you dare, you are the only woman correctly dressed’. So, if you are a dedicated follower of fashion, male or female, what is it please? 

The Gardener

A Moodscope member