It's hip 2 B square!

Pop Will Eat Itself likes to span the entire spectrum of pop cultural phenomena, and the murky world of FASHION is no exception.

If you’ve been in any of the UK’s major cultural hubs in the past three years, you may have seen one of these:


It’s a Barbour Beaufort waxed jacket, traditionally favoured by the Royal Family and anyone who owns a country estate (currently retailing at RRP £189.95).

But you would have probably seen it worn as below, or teamed with a MOUSTACHE and tasseled loafers.




However, while recently strolling through the not particularly hip North Kent town of Gillingham (population 100,000), I passed a group of WORKING-CLASS URBAN YOUTHS rocking replicas of the black Barbour Chelsea quilted jacket. This jacket has also been favoured by City bankers (left) and CREATIVELY-MOBILE URBANITES for some years now.

I am all in favour of this kind of cultural cross-pollinisation, I’m just surprised at how quickly this trend has filtered down from the cutting edge. At Topman.com there is now even a Country and Heritage section in its jackets department, where you can buy "uber cool" Barbour knock-offs!

Now, I am down with the Barbour jacket entering the mainstream. It is functional, understated, and taps into a RICH VEIN OF ENGLISH HERITAGE. It is also durable and long lasting, counteracting the DISPOSABLE/PRIMARK culture.

So how do you explain the rise of these TRADITIONAL AMERICAN BOATING SHOES (AKA Topsiders)?




This trend was, if not started by, then surely brought to prominence by this band, who, despite attending Ivy League institution Columbia University and wearing cotton Oxford shirts, claim they are not real WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), but are merely “satirising the look” of upper middle class preps.

Commentators in America have suggested that Vampire Weekend offer some kind of MATERIALISTIC ESCAPISM in the midst of global financial crisis. So maybe this is what’s going on with the rise in heritage/upper class clothing?

But the sporting of Barbour jackets in East London PRE-DATES the collapse of Northern Rock! (source: my own eyes). This begs the inevitable question: Did East-London hipsters predict Britain’s financial crisis?*

Also, is it LESS or MORE ironic to wear the attire of a traditional upper-class Conservative now that these guys are actually in power?



The appropriation of this type of clothing into youth-led fashion is nothing new. Working-class FOOTBALL CASUALS were rocking the Beaufort on the terraces in the 1980s, during which time the country was also in the midst of FINANCIAL RECESSION, bringing us culturally full-cycle!

But the kids wearing Barbours today are more likely to be trust-fund kids than working class kids, and they have probably PILFERED their Barbours from their grandparents! I even know a girl who rocks a Barbour-style jacket that was a compulsory part of her school uniform at public boarding school! There is a DELICIOUS IRONY here if anyone can be bothered to explore it.

Now, PWEI does not espouse CULTURAL SNOBBERY, and that includes INVERSE CULTURAL SNOBBERY. But all of this coincides with a truly frightening rise to prominence of this:



There is no irony to be found here – this shop is for GENUINE SLOANES.

You might say, “Who cares why people are wearing this stuff, maybe it’s purely about aesthetics?"

That may be true, but if PWEI can’t apply pseudo-academic analysis to trivial matters, then what's the point?

*No