Thrifty Prince Charles Back in Fashion

[Melcombe]

According to an article in The Times (behind a paywall)

The prince has started a clothing collection to focus on sustainability in a throwaway age

In a magazine more associated with dresses and heels than the delights of a well-made pair of brogues, Prince Charles, 71, has waxed lyrical about the pleasure he gets from having clothes mended instead of succumbing to “this extraordinary trend of throwaway clothing”.
The interview comes a week before the launch of his own foray into fashion with a sustainable collection designed in Milan and made by textile students on a course at the Prince’s Foundation at Dumfries House.

The prince, who still wears a pair of shoes he bought in 1971, went on: “I happen to be one of those people who’d get shoes — or any item of clothing — repaired, rather than just throw it away. And that’s why I think there are huge opportunities for people to set up small businesses involved with repair, maintenance and reuse. Which is one of the reasons I’ve tried at Dumfries House to start a kind of thrift market for precisely that purpose, where you can bring things in — whether it’s electrical appliances or anything — to be mended.”
His foundation started a textile training project in high-end fashion and sewing skills because not enough young people were learning traditional crafts.

In the interview with Enninful, who collaborated with the Duchess of Sussex when she guest-edited Vogue last year, Charles said: “The British fashion textile sector is of enormous importance. But the trouble is, it
requires constant investment in young people and in the development of real skills. We developed our atelier system to promote the traditional skills that are so vital — whether it’s embroidery or sewing or cutting or tailoring.

“And a lot of the students we train here are snapped up by local firms — the ones that are left in the textile sector. But it seems to me there are huge opportunities within the whole sustainable fashion sector, to counter this trend of throwaway clothing — or throwaway everything, frankly.”

The Modern Artisan, which has created a collection for men and women using sustainable textiles, is a collaboration between the Prince’s Foundation and the Yoox Net-a-Porter Group. The clothes, on sale next year on net-a-porter.com and its associated sites, are designed by six fashion graduates from the Politecnico di Milano, one of Italy’s leading design schools, and made by six British artisans who have done a course in luxury small-batch production skills at Dumfries House.

Federico Marchetti, the chairman of Yoox Net-a-Porter, said: “This project . . . will help equip a new generation of skilled men and women to fuse traditional craft with digitally infused creativity

Prince Charles’s wardrobe is a lesson in the “buy less, but better” credo (Charlie Gowans-Eglinton writes). In a fashion context, sticking to a personal uniform may see your look fall out of favour but — thanks to fashion’s cyclical nature — it will always come back around again, and it also avoids the pitfalls of following trends. Shopping in this way also happens to be far more sustainable than following the cult of the new.

On the whole, menswear has fewer bells and whistles than womenswear. Fashion trends are the preserve mostly of catwalk models, pop-culture stars, and the young fashion set — but while you might not spot anyone wearing the silver flares, pastel cropped cardigans or leopard-print coats from Gucci’s latest menswear collection (see Harry Styles’s latest music video) at your local boules club, there are still little shifts in men’s fashion: the size of a lapel, the width of a trouser, the shade of a tie — and it’s no surprise that Charles’s tie always matches his tartan, as he says that he minds about “detail and colour combinations”.

That much was visible in the 1970s, the best part of our Prince’s twenties, when he began wearing the staples that we can still see in his wardrobe now. The taupe wool double-breasted coat that he wore on a visit to Canada in 1975 was a blueprint for the taupe tweed double-breasted coat that he wore on another visit to Canada in 2001 (the pale blue collared shirts worn underneath both could be one and the same); the practical waxed jacket he wore in the countryside in 1978 foretold the one he’d wear when Countryfile visited his Gloucestershire farm in 2013 (which itself was by British brand John Partridge, and patched from multiple repairs).

Seventies Charles might not have fully embraced the flares (yes, just like the new Gucci ones — the fashion cycle in action), spray-on shirts and magic-eye prints of that era, but he did experiment briefly with a naval beard in 1976 (lobbying to bring this one back), don a stetson and bolo tie on a 1977 visit to Calgary, and even try a designer sweatshirt (bright yellow by luxury brand Hermes, emblazoned with “Happy Hermes”) at a polo match in 1977.

Polo-playing Prince is one we’ll see more of in series four of The Crown when actor Josh O’Connor wears a replica of one of Charles’s many polo shirts. The series, released on November 15, follows the royal family between 1979 and 1990: Charles’s thirties.
That decade also brought us a glimpse of another sporting side of Charles — see those natty neckerchiefs in co-ordinating colours tied over his base-layer rollnecks when skiing — and the neat-as-a-pin military uniform (his uniforms are always impeccable) that he wore at his first wedding. And then, of course, we see Charles the father relaxing at home in short-sleeved shirts — unbuttoned to show a tan and even some chest hair — relaxed beige trousers and deck shoes at Highgrove House in 1986.

There have been other highlights — like the black tuxedo that Charles wore with a bow tie to a fashion event in 1999. In 2001, he wore what looked to be the same suit and tie (certainly the printed pocket square was the same) to a film premiere, showing he can do Hollywood as well as Heritage. Or the grey morning suit that he wore to Royal Ascot in 2009, and last wore there last year, swapping one pastel tie for another over the years just as the Queen alternates between block colours for her race day outfits. But in the last 20, even 30 years, Charles’s style has changed very little. He always looks dapper, appropriate, and expensive but never flashy.

[aston]

And there is a nice to read interview with him about this in the December edition of Vogue.

[Noble Savage]

There's often a touch of fast fashion influence in these articles, as if a certain item of clothing is made to be only worn in public once, and the feigned shock that it isn't.