I was visiting the Queen Mother yesterday and whilst eating a big plate of roasted potatoes (yum!) I was explaining what the blog is and does. She never really realised I was so into fashion and was rather excited when I told the things I'd been working on.
I come from a very small mining and harbour town. The people are rough, and back when the Queen Mum was young, also exceptionally hardworking (the same cannot be said now however). She was telling me her stories of her youth and how her mother, my grandmother, took great pride in dressing her daughters very well. As a family they were working class, but because both my gran and my grandfather worked they were much better off than most people. This meant they never went without whilst other children and families lived in squalor. My gran apparently used to make big pots of hearty soup and throw parties for all the less well off children from the surrounding area to ensure they got at least some good food in their little tummies.
Because my mum and her sister were so well dressed, they were known as the Princesses - my mum, Princess Alexandra and her sister, Princess Margaret. My gran would find patterns of beautiful dresses and have a seamstress create them for her daughters. My mother would always get hers made in blue whilst her sister would always have hers in pink. So it seems bespoke runs in the family!
On Sundays they would don pretty hats and white gloves and would visit a local farm where they would buy strawberries and gooseberries and the farmers wife would always give them a big bunch of flowers to take home to gran. It sounded so idyllic.
It got me thinking about how style and fashion finds it's way into the most unusual and unlikely of places - even a poor, seaside town.
I loved the fact that even though my mum and her mum weren't surrounded by fashion or style, quite the opposite infact, they still had a desire to express themselves via their clothes.
I've always been of the opinion that very often real style is in those people who don't have easy access to it. It's easy to be fashionable when you live in a city like Paris, Milan or London, where it's on your doorstep and you can absorb it no matter what your budget/age/class may be, but for me, many truly stylish people are those who have to hunt it out, create it, invent it and express it, even though that might mean they may look like an alien in their own surroundings. These people exist so much in their own heads and their creativity is genuine because the odds are stacked against them. That's why I was so impressed that my gran, who had never been outside of her town in all her days, still had a sense of what style was and sought it out for her daughters.
Of course nowadays, even the smallest of towns have access to magazines and TV and can still absorb fashion, but back in the day, when the Queen Mother was young, that simply wasn't the case.
My gran passed away when I was teenager, but now I know why she would always vehemently defend me whenever I got any grief for how I dressed - because she understood the need for self expression. Go gran!
Queen Michelle
