by It is a peculiarity of the British aristocracy that you can hold a title, such as duke of Devonshire, and have no connection with the part of the country to which it refers. The Devonshires – the first earls and later dukes – do not live in Devon. Past and present properties include Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire, and Chiswick House and Burlington House in London. Chatsworth is the jewel in the portfolio: a stunning Grade I listed pile in Derbyshire, often described as one of Britain’s most loved stately homes. For those who have enough of it, land becomes just another inheritance to be discarded, sold, bequeathed and bounced down and around the generations, like a nice handbag or an old opera coat.
This summer, Chatsworth will present Erdem: Imaginary Conversations, an exhibition exploring the influence of Deborah Cavendish, nee Mitford, former resident and muse for the designer’s spring/summer 24 collection. Showcasing deconstructed ball gowns and glittering insects, the first look is the funniest, a frayed frayed outfit that references the Duchess’s love of red Derbyshire caps and Scottish dumpies. Erdem says he wanted it to look “ravaged by chickens”.
Adorable as it is, this look reflects the fashion world’s strange reverence for the elite. From the days of Tim Walker bursting into stately homes to Fendi outfits inspired by Princess Anne, the visual codes and sprawling homes of the upper classes often grace mood boards and magazine pages. Part of the magic, at least as far as designers and photographers are concerned, seems to be in that very beautiful mixture of splendor and squalor – creeping into a world where misogyny can be read as a taste for unconventionality and matters of quality but nothing is too precious. ; principles like “make and mend” take on a different, more ambitious tone when there’s an archive full of hand-painted 19th-century rugs to plunder.
On a simpler level, with its gardens designed by Donn, the aristocracy saturates fashion’s taste for high fantasy: offering an approximation of a real-life fairy tale, complete with tiara and castle (funny since it was put in edit so many fairy tales to hide their unpleasantness, the nobles are experts at hiding dark, exploitative secrets beneath the idyllic exterior). However, as much as it is clear why an industry that sells expensive clothes might decide to refer to the historically rich and powerful, it is troubling to see how easily the continued romanticization of inherited titles, on hereditary titles and huge inherited wealth – the average value. of title after doubling post-financial crisis to reach £16m – it acts as a kind of soft promotion, evoking affection and even respect for those who have succeeded in the feudal order.
Known colloquially as Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire spent half a century as the chattel of Chatsworth after marrying Andrew Cavendish in 1941. In 1981, ownership was transferred to the Chatsworth House Trust, a charity responsible for its maintenance and community access – with the family payment market. rent for their private quarters.
Over the years, the Duchess became a rather beloved institutional figure: the epitome of the old school, a posh no-nonsense girl with a far-mythological childhood, who loved animals (unless they could be hunted), b ‘better to buy her agricultural clothes. shows (apart from her custom Turnbull & Asser shirts in every colour), and, being a lifelong Conservative, managed to achieve a veneer of neutrality compared to her sisters who included Nazis (Unity) and fascists (Diana, repeatedly as Debo’s favorite).
In the exhibition, Erdem expresses Debo’s inimitable English intellect and spirit, praising her firm in the revival of Chatsworth – selling land, buildings and artwork to fund an unexpected £7m inheritance tax bill, she set up more recently including a farm shop and farmyard – And riffing on all the staple references you’d expect: Cecil Beaton portraits and glittering jewels, pretty dancing slippers set alongside sensible walking shoes.
Taken on its own terms it is a beautiful exhibition, especially in the way it shows Moralıoğlu’s clear enjoyment of the research process. And if you go to Chatsworth you long, despite yourself, for ceilings big enough to host murals of goddesses and kings. But look closer and Debo emerges as a poster girl for the still-influential interwar fiction of a ruling class on the brink of resignation; their roofs and their hearts are both full to the brim, the old world is fading and the heating bills are rising. This patently decadent image of hoarding tulle skirts and an endless supply of precious artwork and tapestries to sell off in an emergency strikes a strange nostalgia synapse in the British psyche. It’s equal parts Brideshead Revisited without end and a remake of The Pursuit of Love, in which the dream of the big house is counterbalanced by more variable problems: chilblains, melancholy, emotional distance, the threat of obsolescence. But it is worth remembering that, in the case of Debo, the big story is not a victory against the odds or any real threat of hardship, but something more like a princess who got to keep the palace.
There are many types of inspiration involved, and designers often lean into invocations of an imagined national character, playing with a combination of crude cliché and selective cultural history to create their idea of a certain type of woman. French designers get understated chic, Italian designers sexy maximalism and so on. British designers often fall back on the idea that eccentricity is scraped around the edges: a collision between monarchs and punks, pearls and hoodies.
While this may suggest a more democratic class free-for-all, the sub-cultural or aesthetic elements of the working class are often presented as an obscene stereotype or an abomination to the fantasy of the aristocracy – unsurprisingly it’s in an industry where there are still an awful lot of titles. and honorifics, and the golden age of working-class designers is long behind us. Before this, more interesting and provocative riffs on aristocratic codes came from the likes of Alexander McQueen, who grew up in east London and left school at 16 when he was offered an apprenticeship on Savile Row, and Vivienne Westwood, who worked as a member. factory technician and primary school teacher. But research from 2022 shows that the workforce in Britain’s creative industries has halved since the 1970s to just 7.9%, and a recent Vogue Business report highlighted various systemic barriers to entry – prospects including endless unpaid labor. starting your fashion career one automatically excludes those who can’t afford to work for free, especially as the cost of living crisis recedes.
The posh continues to thrive. Scan the Peerage and you’ll see lots of prominent fashion names, from models Cara Delevingne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Jodie Kidd and Lady Jean Campbell to designers Serena Bute and Samantha Cameron. The Mitford sisters alone were responsible for spawning a whole generation of ‘It’ models, editors, girls and stylists, and fashion is an industry where connections and wealth don’t open the front door as much as the keys to the castle offer. . In 2016, then-chief creative officer and CEO at Burberry Christopher Bailey described the Mitfords as “glam rock, military, wellies … a patchwork of things I love” (which begs the question, given Unity and Diana’s politics , which military?
Burberry went through a period of image rebranding in the late 00’s when its famous check started being worn by what was classified as the “wrong people”: “chavs”. The answer was to revive an image of British heritage and self-interest, all mud on silk hems and tasteful trench coats. It was often nice to see the results, but the desire to destroy undesirable customers in pursuit of a higher class of customers was very ugly.
That’s another reason the aristocracy retains its inherent thematic appeal: once it was able to dictate fashions and lengths – Chatsworth was also home to the famous 18th-century Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, whose hairstyles were legendary – many of whom are probably still customers. .
In 1959, Evelyn Waugh wrote in an updated introduction to Brideshead Revisited, published 15 years earlier, that it was “a panegyric preached over an empty coffin”, noting that “today Brideshead would be open to visitors, its Treasures are being rearranged by expert hands and the skeleton is better maintained than Lord Marchmain’s.”
The “cult of the country house” he identified is still strong – Chatsworth is still very popular, and the Erdem show will undoubtedly be very popular – but the status of the aristocracy is even stronger. Debo’s son Peregrine, the current duke of Devonshire, has an estimated net worth of £910m, occupying number 182 on this year’s Sunday Times rich list. This is not surprising, as it follows a general trend of extraordinary wealth consolidation among British peers through land ownership, asset management schemes, investments and more.
We may now be allowed to poke our noses inside their great halls and even take great joy in their frocks, but it is worth remembering that the nobles are not just relics or pleasant stock characters – but active participants in a landscape very unequal.
