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Cut from a different cloth: don’t be fooled by fashion’s obsession with upper-class wardrobes

While the aristocracy often inform mood boards and glossy magazine pages, we should not be distracted by the romanticisation of inherited titles and unearned fortunes

Over the decades, the duchess became a relatively beloved institutional figure: the epitome of the old school, no-nonsense posh girl with a much-mythologised childhood, who loved animals (unless they could be hunted), preferred to buy her clothes at agricultural shows (other than her bespoke Turnbull & Asser shirts in every colour), and, by being a lifelong Conservative, managed to achieve a veneer of neutrality compared to her sisters who numbered among them a Nazi (Unity) and a fascist (Diana, who was repeatedly pronounced Debo’s favourite). In the exhibition, Erdem champions Debo’s ingenuity and indomitable English spirit, praising her business nous in reviving Chatsworth – selling off land, buildings and artwork to fund an unexpected £7m inheritance tax bill, she later set up ventures including a farm shop and farmyard – while riffing on all the staple references one might expect: Cecil Beaton portraits and glitzy jewels, dainty dancing slippers arranged next to sensible walking shoes. But research from 2022 shows that the number of working-class people in Britain’s creative industries has shrunk by half since the 1970s to just 7.9%, while a recent report by Vogue Business flagged various systemic barriers to entry – expectations including endless unpaid labour at the start of one’s fashion career automatically excluding those who cannot afford to work for free, especially as the cost of living crisis continues to bite.

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