'Prissy style' of the South east - WHYYYY????

[windygallows]

I live in a smaller town in the home counties after many years in a large urban centre in the North. Lovely place but the style is so different and I'm still struggling to make heads or tails of it.

Up north people wore a lot of black and the look was a bit more slick... down here women my age (40s) and even younger dress in what I can only describe as a kind of prissy, prim style with:

• lots of cardis
• lots of bright colours including loads of floral dresses and skirts
• Very rarely do you see lots of black or all dark colours
• bootcut mum jeans with heeled boots a la 1995
• lots more 'ortho' sandals and shoes

When I see women in brightly coloured mary janes wearing spotted Boden skirts and sporting floral Cath Kidston bags I honestly think it's an outfit more suited to a 10 year old girl.

Help me understand the style down here. Where does it come from? Is this quintessential english style? Or are the home counties stuck in a style warp? I don't think I'm some style guru and certainly don't want to be teetering around in a sparkly dress in heels....but it feels v different here!

We can forgive children style misdemeanours..! The paths are much better, it was a bit ridiculous wading through the mud to get to dinner.

You can have opinions, without being snide and nasty,

prissy, prim style with:....

• bootcut mum jeans with heeled boots a la 1995
• lots more 'ortho' sandals and shoes

..... I honestly think it's an outfit more suited to a 10 year old girl. .... Or are the home counties stuck in a style warp? I

Stapler Exactly. Dress however you want OP, but your post makes you sound a bit like a teenager who thinks they're just too good for their home town.

Is the Cotswolds really Home Counties? I thought Henley barely made it in and that's practically Berkshire.

I'm in Oxfordshire op, and don't know people who dress like that. I don't know if I don't mix in the right groups (lots of cos here) or whether you just didn't pay enough attention to the sartorial elegance of the inhabitants when you moved and now regret it.

Nope it's definitely not a north/south thing. It's got to be city vs suburbs/countryside. I've moved from Leeds to a village on the moors and all the mums here dress the way you described. They look about 10 years older than they actually are and I find it very odd. Each to their own though if that's what people like to wear. I stick out like a sore thumb.

I live in Brighton so there's a big mixture of styles depending on area. My neighbourhood isn't very well off so there's no Boden- lots of Primark leggings/ patterned loose trousers with long vest tops, trainers and a top knot. I quite like the retro, floral clothes so I stick out a bit if I wear it. But there are other parts of the city where women go for the prim stuff, there's the edgier student/ hipster population, hippie/ boho types. Very varied.

Spudlet - I could have written a post like this but a bit more boring don't you think... I mean you do want opinions don't you. It's hard to talk about fashion without stating dislikes and sounding what you perceive as slightly judgemental.

'While I appreciate that everyone has their own style and in no way want to judge or devalue anyone's fashion sense or in any way critique, I don't think I really like the dominant style down here... although this in no way negates the right of anybody to wear whatever they want of course, no judging.' ZZZZZZ

and ultimately it was the 'prim' sort of a prissy uptight style that I didn't understand, not necessarily Boden. It may just be Oxfordshire...!

And probably not home counties - my mistake.

I live in a greater London suburb.

I never see anyone dressing like you describe in the OP.

It is interesting how there are these local "uniforms" though. Sometimes there will be a thread on here where loads of people pile in to say that they always wear leggings with summer dresses, say, and I can't think of the last time I saw someone dressed like that.

I recently commented on a thread that I had gone to Kentish Town, wearing a bright orange sweater (which is actually quite bright for me, although I do wear colours) and I seemed to be the only person in the whole of North London not wearing black.

Dress however you want OP, but your post makes you sound a bit like a teenager who thinks they're just too good for their home town

not to me! maybe I am a bitch though

But it isn't Oxfordshire, or an Oxfordshire uniform. At best it applies to a small area of your small town in the Cotswolds which is not the same thing.

I'm not in home counties either and I buy from Boden occasionally but only non-patterned things. A lot of women my age and younger dress very 'plainly' (like me I think) in that they're just wearing jeans and tops but there's a lot of exhausting effort that goes in to looking so effortlessly natural. They may look like they're just wearing jeans and a t-shirt but the brand, fit, colour, leg length and neck line not to mention jewellery is all carefully thought out. Colours only chosen if the do genuinely flatter complexion etc.

Or is it just me!? Is everybody else just genuinely rolling out of bed and I'm having to put all this work ing out in to looking like I just picked up my jeans off the floor, oh this old fitted t-shirt (in dusty rose pink with a v neck to flatter the clavicles :-p)

Dressing for work is much harder. I do look prissy at work. Never manage that fine line.

OP I live in West Oxfordshire....you've seen me out and about havn't you ? .

Its very skinny jeans and boots at my school run probably as I'm 20 years older than most...I'm usually colourful and not stylistic

I think it's a middle class thing! I live in the north, I'm not middle class and neither are a lot of my friends and we tend to go around in outfits like this.

Ohh a lot of the middle class mums at my DC's school look pretty much like that! There are occasionally wellies too. And parkas. And dogs.

To clarify, I mean like the photo above from StephenKatz

I wear mostly navy and black in the winter and more colour in the summer. I reckon it's an extension of that.

I do think campers are due a revival.

It may be a bit of a North/South thing but also a town/country thing.

On a trip to Manchester me and my colleagues did note a lot of black, a lot of suits and a shit load of tan and makeup.

I'm based in rural Cambs, not posh enough for the Joules/Boden lot but if you have the dosh that's what you'll wear, and floral dresses are totally acceptable workwear, much less makeup and tan than in Manchester and it's all a bit doggy/horsey.

I have gone to posh hangouts such as Dulwich or bits of the Cotwolds though where there is a total middle class mum wardrobe of head to toe Boden/Joules and Kirstie Allsop is clearly a style icon.

I reckon it's a home counties look OP. I live in a North London borough and can easily spot home counties / Herts people on trains and the tube at the weekend as they dress more or less as you describe.

I don't think it's just about "joining in" with a uniform.

I think that when you see something repeatedly you generally warm towrds it and start to think it nicer than you used to.

So you might not be deliberately joining in, you might just see something so often that you start to think it actually is nice.

I remember the first time I saw skinny jeans... I thought they were incredibly ugly and would never catch on.

I think maybe many of the mums you are talking about are perhaps moving out of the city and a corporate environment into more country or suburban way of life. having consciously made that decision their wardrobe follows suit and is therefore the antithesis of work wear.

get a critical mass and herd mentality (oooooo I love boden you must try their..... ) you get a "uniform". a bit like mumsnet and the mumsnet scarf

Just a theory.

I think I'd fit in better down south by the sound of it!

I'm from west Oxfordshire, live up north now. Lots of friends back home (think David Cameron's home town) have started wearing clothes from the local Joules and Crew Clothing shop and have developed unhealthy Boden habits of late. Every Time I go back home and catch up with my friends they do all seem to be pretty much wearing the same thing, it's quite bizarre. We'd have turned our noses up at all that 10 years ago and been horrified to think we would ever shop there! I am partial to the odd Breton top myself.

I'm from west Oxfordshire, live up north now. Lots of friends back home (think David Cameron's home town) have started wearing clothes from the local Joules and Crew Clothing shop and have developed unhealthy Boden habits of late. Every Time I go back home and catch up with my friends they do all seem to be pretty much wearing the same thing, it's quite bizarre. We'd have turned our noses up at all that 10 years ago and been horrified to think we would ever shop there! I am partial to the odd Breton top myself.

I think for a lot of women coping with babies and toddlers ushers in a phase when dressing stylishly really isn't a top priority given all the other stuff going on. Then when they come out the other side they find it hard, for all sorts of good reasons, to pick up where they left off, particularly if the dominant style around them is one which prioritises comfort and practicality and even - heaven forfend - the heinous concept of the 'age-appropriate.' Indeed the entire Boden brand (and Cath Kidston, Joules, White Stuff, etc. etc.) is based on this big demographic of women who have chosen not to be edgy or sexy or sharp but prefer instead to express themselves through a 'fun' print or a bit of glitter. Moreover, in that situation it's more appealing to blend in than stand out, hence the emergence of regional tribes.
And I absolutely agree with the poster who commented that if you see something enough times it begins to seem standard.