The idea of a Sloane Ranger probably conjures up a very specific image in your mind. It’s of a plummy-voiced, upper-class woman roaming the King’s Road in the 1980s, dashing off to the country dressed in a tweed twinset, a string of pearls, an Hermès silk scarf, sensible loafers and a waxed Barbour, isn’t it? The Sloanes were many things, but “chic” wasn’t one of them. As novelist Plum Sykes wrote in a recent edition of her Substack: “They were very, very uncool.”
Imagine Sykes’s surprise, then, when she spotted Vanessa Friedman, chief fashion critic of The New York Times, at a recent Chanel show in Paris with a “dark green oilskin jacket” thrown over her all-black ensemble. When Sykes asked if she was wearing a Barbour, Friedman replied: “Of course I am.” But how on earth did this Sloaney staple end up on the front row of Paris Fashion Week?
Barbours, it should be said, have a considerable degree of style kudos (see collaborations with Ganni or almost any picture of Alexa Chung at Glastonbury). But Friedman sporting a waxed jacket is part of a wider Sloane Ranger revival that seems to be upon us. The TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s novel Rivals, which returns this week for its second season, has brought plenty of 1980s exuberance back to our screens. High-end and high street designer riffs on the mood might have you clutching those pearls and digging out a pie-crust collar shirt.
The archetype was first identified by journalists Ann Barr and Peter York in 1982, when they immortalised the tweedy tropes in The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook. In an A-Z of “Sloane going out clothes”, Barr and York suggests pearl chokers and long print dresses that “look like the drawing room curtains”. “You might be named Dowdiest Person, but at least you’ll look like a lady,” they conclude.
Sloane Ranger 2.0, which is anything but dowdy, has been brewing for a while now, thanks in part to renewed interest in “old money” aesthetics on social media. London designer Laura Andraschko’s spring/summer 25 collection was even called “Sloane Ranger” and featured T-shirts with the slogan “my boyfriend went to Eton”. Kent & Curwen’s AW26 show featured caped coats and a posh athleticism that felt very Lady Diana Spencer (the eternal Sloane muse). There were even a few touches in Demna’s SS26 Gucci looks; the house’s equestrian heritage makes this unavoidable and a silk scarf printed with something horsey will never not be Sloaney.
But the resurgence is also infiltrating every-day fashion. Flick to the Zara homepage and the first thing you’ll be met with (at the time of writing) is a textured tartan blazer, styled with a pussy-bow blouse and, for a 2026 twist, mid-wash jeans. It’s the Sloane look for the Matthieu Blazy at Chanel era.
So, too, is the stand-collar Kew blouse by fashion’s favourite shirting brand, WNU, which keeps selling out.
Could this season’s slew of funnel-neck jackets also owe something to the pie-crust-collared west Londoners of the 1980s? The brooch revival that we’ve seen on catwalks and red carpets for a couple of years now certainly does.
A Princess Anne-esque indifference to trends feels like a status symbol
Equally appealing, in this day and age, is the Sloaney predilection for robust country pieces that will last forever (it’s all about Fairfax & Favor, Holland Cooper, Penelope Chilvers and other modern country brands). A kind of Princess Anne-esque resistance, or perhaps rather genuine indifference, to the tides of fashion feels like a status symbol in the era of micro-trends that cycle at a dizzying pace.
This was also the thinking behind Silvia Venturini Fendi’s assertion that the Princess Royal is the “chicest woman in the world” and Miu Miu’s “Miu Balmoral” collection of 2024. The edit consisted of cable knits, waxed cotton overcoats and Church’s x Miu Miu brogues, all inspired by “the fearlessness of British style”.
The Sloane Rangers might not have been fearless, but they were confident in their uniform. So channel something of their style this spring/summer, even if you just throw a Barbour on over your most fashion-forward outfit and wear it somewhere you’d never expect to see one. Like the corner shop — or the office. Thrills await.
