These colours don't run

Above: Choosing those rainbow trews.

CHANGE is afoot. Our colours are no longer carried. We are, I fear, losing our identity. The Cotswolds are becoming craven.

This is not to say that the local Gloucestershire brogue is giving way to Estuary English or that our organic Old Spot is being turned into processed ham (although Tesco have done a deal to mass produce our pigs by crossing them with a commercial hybrid strain). Our hills continue to undulate, walls are still stone and dry and our houses remain of Quality Street quality.

It is the natives, however, who are not as they were. No more do they boast about chasing furry animals and shooting for the pot. The industrial consumption of Marlboro Lights and large G and Ts is disappearing. The once imperious Hermes head-scarf has bowed to blonde highlights.

The Husky has given way to the high fashion fur gilet while the Barbour is no longer a useless weathered symbol of rural cred, but now simply worn as an oily defence against inclement weather. The illustrious wax jacket even sports an enamel badge bearing its name, in much the same way as urban designers mysteriously insist on putting their signature on the outside of garments.

However, far more serious than any of the above is the continuing decline of the wearing of the mustard coloured corduroy trouser and its salmon pink, and occasionally brilliant green, sibling in public.

Lurid coloured cords have been, for as long as anyone can remember, the very public mark of the Cotswold country gent. Once they were as common as medieval sheep pastures.

No parish church could consider itself consecrated without a praying pair in its congregation. No rural estate agent would gain a commission unless his client was blinded by the leggings. No local high street was without the brilliant strides perambulating its length.

In every hamlet, village and town the primrose trews and the cerise breeks were a uniform as distinctive as an African dictator’s shirt.

The trousers are part of what is known, oddly enough, as The ‘Hampshire Code’, which is in fact a dress code created in Gloucestershire by the early generation of post-war Chelsea and Fulham ex-pats. It is leisure wear based on a Sloane Ranger paint chart – Ferrari red sweaters, Balmoral green fleeces and pink blancmange socks – a Rastafarian rainbow of colours that long ago eclipsed the sombre tweeds that had gone before them. And at the heart of this look was the noisy corduroy.

There were few social events in the Cotswolds where they did not feature. Every drinks party was a riot of colour. At the country fair, the point to point, the Cheltenham races and the polo at Cirencester Park, supporters boasted bold shades on their nether regions.
But in recent years the cords have lost their swank. And while sales of the very brightest of the trousers are holding up in Cirencester, Tetbury, Chipping Norton and other major bastions of the bags, they are seen less and less in public.

“It is time to get them out and wear them loud and proud,” says Hilary Bresques of Pakeman Catto & Carter, the fancy outfitters in Cirencester. “We have just produced a brilliant lilac pair and we want to see them out on the street, not hidden away in drawing rooms.”

Who is to blame for the wish to hide this new purple pigment? The fault may at first seem to lie with the latest generation of down-sizers and quality-of-life movers. In their former city life anonymity was the key and the quiet colour was dominant. As the City got more serious – long lunches vanished, late dinner parties became a rarity and bottled water was the new snifter – even the red brace and shocking sock was relegated to yuppie history.

The dark suit with dark accessories was the kit that worked beneath the sodium light. It opened every door and sat comfortably at every do from Boodles to Boujis. Where now, for example, the shagging hippopotamus tie?

But a more likely explanation is the creeping 21st century Puritanism, personified by our Wee Free Prime Minister, that has begun to transfer its morals from the city to the countryside and in particular to the Cotswolds. Public displays of joy are curtailed. The hunting horn that once blew so proud is silenced.

The drinks’ tray that conjured up the strongest cocktails now meets with disapproved while the cosy smoke-filled snug bar has been blown away.

The fading from sight of the brightly coloured trews is a reflection of this severe age. It is time we halted this discolouration. After all, Scotland still shouts its identity publicly with the wearing of tartan and dank Northern towns have adopted the ubiquitous nylon football shirt. So too should the Cotswolds wear its mustard, pink and bottle green colours with pride. As the football hooligans’ Union Jack T-shirt once proclaimed ‘These colours don’t run’.

Do you agree with David Tyler? Email mike.lowe@archant.co.uk