69-year-old Charles Gordon-Lennox, the 11th Duke of Richmond, is known for his neat silhouette. “I’m not a big fan of casual menswear,” he admits. “I just don’t think it looks great. I don’t like a pair of sneakers, let’s put it this way…’
I’m speaking to His Grace (dressed in a stunning 20-year-old suit) ahead of the first ever “Future of Vintage” summit, which he is hosting at his home on the Goodwood Estate this week, after inviting notaries and influencers such as Paula Sutton from Hill House Vintage and Henry McNeill-Njoku and Theo El-Kattan from Known Source to join him to discuss second-hand fashion. The agenda will include topics such as authentication, availability and investment, as well as the hurdles the sector faces and what can be done to help overcome them.
The top comes at an interesting time for vintage fashion. Archival pieces were all over the red carpet during awards season: Sydney Sweeney wore Angelina Jolie’s 2004 Marc Bouwer gown to the Vanity Fair Oscars After Party, while Jennifer Lawrence chose a Givenchy by John Galliano gown once worn by Kate for the same occasion. Moss was carried. event. Even the high priestess of fashion, Dame Anna Wintour, has given the movement her seal of approval through the next Met Gala theme, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” which will see dozens of celebrities wearing vintage pieces from the likes of Balenciaga and Dior. . And while most of us don’t typically have access to the likes of 1970s Yves Saint Laurent, that doesn’t mean there aren’t fantastic pieces available to buy second-hand.
For the Duke, it’s about repositioning vintage. It’s no longer something that smells a bit musty and was left unloved in a thrift store. Rather, they are well-designed pieces that are made to last. “Vintage clothing has to be of good quality if it is going to last all that time,” says the Duke. ‘I have suits that are thirty years old. It’s about self-expression, rather than ‘dressing up,’ and it’s the joy of something that has history and stories to tell.”
His fellow Summit participant Paula Sutton, who has become a social media star thanks to her love of vintage, agrees: “I have jackets that are 30, 40, 50, 60 years old and not a single seam is out of place. the shape is intact,” she says. “Buttons can always be redone, but look for durable fabrics like tweed and wool, and check for stains and things that can’t be easily repaired.”
Of course, the sustainability argument also plays a role – a major concern, especially for Generation Z. “It is both a virtuous and a sartorial choice,” His Grace agrees. “Second-hand is a good thing now. It’s cool, something responsible.”
“Encouraging people to buy more is incredibly damaging,” Sutton adds. “Learning how to make sustainable choices is so important, as is normalizing that you can reuse and recycle.”
Although more closely associated with racing, the Duke’s championing of vintage fashion makes a lot of sense. In 1998 he relaunched the Goodwood Motor Circuit with Revival, 32 years after the last bikes came up to speed under his grandfather’s tenure. When someone suggested that the event – which focuses on vintage cars from the festival’s heyday of 1948-1966 – should also encourage guests to dress modestly, some people were not immediately convinced.
“It was considered a very bad idea by many people,” says the duke. “But it turned out to be something amazing. I remember in the first few years we did it, people didn’t want to go home. They didn’t want to go back over the threshold to experience the real world, they wanted to stay in this little bubble.”
The Duke admits they were lucky that some of the biggest fashion was happening in the 1940s and 1960s. “That moment in the 1950s when things started to get a bit crazier, the music started to play a bigger role and the men’s suits became a bit more flamboyant – that was a great time,” he muses. “Women’s dresses and men’s suits from the post-war period made everyone look great. I have made quite a few suits from vintage fabric from the 1950s.”
His daily uniform is a suit and if he could wear the fashions of any other era now, it would be the 18th century – although he does admit to being a fashion follower in his youth. “Now I wear a suit every day, which is the most comfortable for me,” he explains. “Very high pants, so there’s nothing tight around your waist and it’s very warm.”
It is also about supporting traditional crafts. “If you’re lucky enough to have something made for you, it just feels very different and looks very elegant,” he argues. “I have three sons and they all enjoy having something made. It’s such a special experience, the amount of craftsmanship that goes into it and all those things are dying and we have to keep them going. I would really like to make shoes, or cut a suit myself. The ability to do that is an incredible skill.”
Growing up, the Duke’s mother, Susan, was a keen seamstress (“she had lots of those Butterick paper patterns”) and knitted, although she did not make clothes for him. One of his earliest fashion memories concerns his grandmother: “For my eighth birthday she gave me a very grown-up cream silk shirt and a cashmere cardigan from a children’s shop in Bond Street. I felt like I was 21, not 8.”
But it is a piece that once belonged to his grandfather, the ninth Duke, and which perhaps has the most sentimental value to him. “I have a scarf that my grandfather used to race with,” he says. “He was wearing white overalls with a white shirt, a tie, a pin, and then the whole thing was held together by a rather crude belt. It was a pretty strong look. To top it off, he wore the family’s Gordon tartan on a printed silk scarf. It’s basically in shreds now, but I still have it. In fact, he was so inspired by the scarf that he asked Italian designer E.Marinella, who he says makes the best ties (“I’m even wearing one right now”), to recreate it for Revival’s anniversary. He also had several jackets made for it, based on designs from the 1950s.
Now his three adult sons, Charles, William and Frederick, all raid his wardrobe. “My eldest son also wears all my father’s shoes,” he laughs. “That’s the great thing about handmade menswear: you can change them completely, so if you’re on the bigger side, your kids can wear them.” Meanwhile, his wife, Janet Astor, is fortunate to have inherited dresses worn by her mother, Bronwen, who was Pierre Balmain’s muse in the 1950s. “She had a fantastic collection of vintage things,” says the duke. “We have a pair and my wife wears a pair at Revival.”
When I ask the Duke about his legacy, and whether he wants to encourage a more sustainable way of life, he is modest. “The sustainability argument for what we do is enormous,” he concludes. “The vision is that we can become a bit of a platform for people who really support this sustainable way of dressing and I think that is very positive.”