Who better to revamp the Barbour jacket than a
hunting, shooting, fishing aristocrat? Susie Rushton meets an unlikely fashion
designer
Thursday 15
September 2005 00:00 BST
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/lord-james-percy-to-the-manor-worn-312672.html
Unlikely as
it seems, when he's not picking off a few partridges, Lord James likes nothing
more than to sketch fashion designs. For a year now, the Sloane Ranger's
favourite brand, Barbour, has employed Percy as the designer of a special
collection - of, you guessed it, olive-green jackets - targeted at the more
discerning shooting party-goer. And his Northumberland Range has quickly become
one of the company's best-selling lines.
For
Barbour, Lord James's success hasn't come a moment too soon. Beloved by country
folk, it has a 111-year history, three royal warrants and a strong niche in the
outerwear market - but one that has been facing a stiff challenge from
seriously hi-tech competitors.
In The
Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, Ann Barr and Peter York noted that "The
Barbour appeal is its green oily pre-synthetic look". But today, even
Sloanes admit that technical synthetics are often superior to the classic waxed
jacket.
Lord James,
certainly, had misgivings about the performance and style of Barbour's weighty,
boxy waxed jackets. On meeting Dame Margaret Barbour, the chairman, at a
charity lunch at his family estate in Linhope, he spoke up.
As we look
at his collection at Barbour's head office in South Shields, he tells the
story. "I said, 'Dame Margaret, can I just say something about your coats?
They're beautifully made and all that, but they're pretty crap for actually
doing anything in. You can't swing a cat or shoot a pheasant in them.' She
looked a bit thunderous, and then I showed her the four prototype coats I'd
made." Percy had no schooling at all in clothing design, but he's an
enthusiast who from the age of seven customised his own coats. Before he joined
Barbour, he was already a hobby-designer with a "little luggage
company" here and a "little coat company called Black Wolf"
there.
Dame
Margaret saw in Lord James both an expert who could improve her products and a
marketing opportunity. "He's such an attractive-looking man, isn't he? I
mean, what better representative than him?" she asks.
Percy's
first collection for Barbour, last autumn, was just four coats, each adjusted
for shooting: sleeves engineered to allow the wearer to raise a gun without the
coat pulling up; moleskin for its quietness; breathable Teflon coatings rather
than waxed cotton; and pockets that can be buttoned open while the wearer
reaches for cartridges.
Lord James
has now added country staples such as a leather gilet and a "yard
coat". Given a slimmer fit, a subtle drawstring waist and more flattering
shoulders, he's improved on the trad Barbour look. "My brief was to do a
shooting kit on the basis that, while Barbour had that market 15 years ago,
there's been a lot of erosion.
"Barbour
didn't necessarily have the expertise for the final details. My designs are
still in line with the classic garments, still reasonably old-fashioned and
old-world, but making it high-performance and specifically designed for
movement."
He gave his
prototypes a full work-out, wearing them out on the moors, doing press-ups in
them and even playing a few sets of tennis in them. Of course, there were
limits: the brass zipper had to stay, and he's stuck to a colour palette of
what he says is "olive green, olive green or olive green".
Yet, he
says, he wouldn't really want to stray too far from the traditional Barbour
heritage of camouflage colours and tartan linings. "I'm not that original.
It's got to be reasonably conservative, because that's where the market
lies."
Not that
Lord James is short of ambitions for the Northumberland range: he has a women's
collection planned for September 2006 (take note, Madonna) and wants to expand
into fishing, tweeds and even something for "the younger market".
Barbour are
happy as long as Lord James continues to be the "face" of the brand,
although he dislikes personal promotion: "I would have preferred to be an
anonymous designer, but they wanted me as a front man."
And it's as
a marketing concept, above all, that he's is most valuable: posed in the
company's catalogues and ads leaning against the bonnet of a Land-Rover parked
on a grouse moor, gun slung over one arm, golden retrievers at his feet, he's
an authentic poster-boy for a fading country lifestyle of the English upper
classes.
"It's
quite embarrassing, actually," he says. "I take a hell of a lot of
shit from my mates, but I've got used to it. If I'd produced something that was
crap, I would have been torn to shreds." Instead, he's received plaudits
from the shooting industry and, so far, very respectable sales.
In Lord
James, Barbour have found blue blood, expertise and the "right"
lifestyle. The only hitch appears to be a rather endearing inability to stick
to the marketing script. What will he wear, I ask, when he takes his wealthy
American shooting party on to the moors? The Lightweight Cheviot, perhaps? The
Dunmoor Shooting Fleece?
Percy
stretches back in his chair. "Me? I'll be wearing a T-shirt and a pair of
jeans."
www.barbour.com, 0191-427 4210
Fields of Dreams – October 30, 2013
by James Percy (Author)
Growing up
in the wilds of Northumberland and Scotland, James Percy has enjoyed a
privileged life dominated by sporting adventures. He shares his deep respect
for the Great British countryside and his passion for conservation, wildlife,
shooting and fishing in a series of beautifully written essays. He recalls
sepia-tinted memories of childhood trips to river banks and moorland, and his
developing love affairs with pigeons, grouse, salmon, trout... family dogs and
girls. Now married with four children, his young family plays a big part in his
sporting life. Home, at Linhope, in Northumberland, is also the base for the
grouse, pheasant and partridge shoots that he has painstakingly developed since
the 1980s. Snapshot entries from some of his 2007 and 2008 diary pages
highlight the heartache, triumphs and disasters that shoots endure in this part
of the world. But shooting and fishing are only part of the story. James Percy
is first and foremost a passionate countryman and he writes not so much about
the numbers of game or weight of fish, but the very essence of the creatures,
traditions and characters. It is a colourful mosaic of unapologetic nostalgia,
quiet comedy and Northumbrian humour - the hard truths and gentle reflections
of a northern countryman's way of life.
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