Who actually wears Cabbagees & Roses?

[PaeoniaPlease]

*please excuse the typo in the title!

Newbie here. I'm from the US but love British style and follow British fashion and culture. There's one question to which I can't seem to find the answer - who is actually wearing Cabbages & Roses clothing?

I've really loved Cabbages & Roses lately, but few in the US seems to even be aware of this brand. I know it's a very small brand. I'm also aware that it is not "in style" or even very practical. It would be considered really "out-there" in the US.

My question is - is this brand something that is actually worn by British women? If so, who is actually wearing this brand? Is it 25 year old "Fashionistas", "Cottage Core" girls, the so-called "Turnip Toffs?"
Rich middle aged women? Younger girls with good jobs and large available balances on their credit cards? Mom types?

Have you ever seen someone wearing one of their signature flowy/billowy dresses in public? What type of person were they? How would you describe them?

Thank you for any insight!

I'd never heard of turnip toffs before either, but apparently it's a thing. I guess I've never heard of it because I don't belong to it! Are you in Norfolk @Prunesqualler ?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2754010/The-Turnip-Toffs-Meet-Kate-Will-s-new-neighbours-party-loving-Norfolk-set.html

No I’m in Kent

So is it just a Norfolk thing?

Yeah, looks like it.
I'm a long way from there in many ways! 😄

The spring-summer stuff is starting to come in and already I'm in love with the long, waxed cotton coat, although at £699 it's likely to be a strictly long distance, unrequited affair. There's also no hood - a waxed cotton coat with no cover for your head is bleeding useless, however lovely.

https://www.cabbagesandroses.com/collections/new-in/products/jemima-coat-in-green-wax-cotton?variant=48259114762515

I would adore that if it were less full-skirted. I assume it’s intended to be worn with dresses and skirts, but I think I tight look odd thrown on over jeans and boots, which is how I’d wear it..

Freight in Lewes have some lovely waxed cotton duster coats. UK made, slimmer of silhouette, less hefty of price.

https://freightstore.co.uk/collections/duster-coats

Thanks both although it's the fullness of the C&R version that I really like. I'd wear it over trousers and jeans - I hardly ever wear dresses.

I'm not seriously in the market for one though, just dreaming!

There is a Droopy and Browns appreciation group on FB that often post photos of the postcards. I so loved it when they thunked through the letter box. They had the lovely card printed with places that people had worn their D&B to that season - the likes of GLyndebourne, Buckingham Palace, La Scala etc. DH used to do a spoof on the lines of "This season you wore Droopy & Browns to defend yourself in Court 1 at the Old Bailey......"

I still have a few pieces I can't bear to part with but I did sell quite a bit when I stopped working.

It’s my own fault. When I was young it never occurred to me that anything I loved wouldn’t last forever.

If I’d known - I’d have saved every one of those postcards, along with my D&B clothes, in a bank vault.

Exactly!

A much more extreme look, separates that are still wearable but in my opinion not as nice as before and very strange fabrics, with more recycled ‘boucle’ and ‘jacquard’ fabrics that feel a bit spooky to me.

AFAIK the clothes are still sewn in Cambridgeshire and the knitwear produced in China and Scotland, as before.

If Greggs is a sausage roll shop, I think they are on the right track with those mens underpants! 😂

That’s the last thing I expected to read today. Absolutely hilarious. Greggs will be ‘Sausage Roll Shop’ from now on. ‘Cos it is.

Interesting. I’m not on facebook but its nice to know there is still some appreciation for the clothes out there. I’ve seen some of the clothes on etsy and ebay (For around £200) but most of them seem pretty wrecked, dye running under the arms, rust stains, that kind of thing. Perhaps people are still hanging on to the good stuff.

There’s just no need.

I’ve dithered about the waistcoats for a couple of years. Very tempted by the new one in pink wool. Prices are up again. Five years ago coats were about this much. What do we think so far?

I'm very tempted by the waistcoats. I have a black Harris tweed one from Walker Slater which I wear a lot.

I'd never heard of C&R but it reminds me very much of a woman who pops up on my Insta a lot - her handle is something to do with Mulberry, I think, or Blackberry possibly?! She has a beautiful (albeit incredibly carefully curated!) period house down south somewhere and artfully tousled children.

I like that pink waistcoat although the dresses wouldn't do a thing for me. Very much enjoying the stories about the original D&B shop though!

I have a hard time finding things in Walker Slater, for some reason.. although I do love a good poke about in the Edinburgh shop. Lucky you if you suit a lot of their stuff @IHaveNeverLivedintheCastle !

I think someone should write a book about D&B, honestly. From the start of the company in York outdoor market to how it got its name, the workshops and expansion into the other historic cities, the clients and their memories of the shop and Angela…and the design archive, which must still exist with the people who revived it later on. It would be fascinating.

I've only got one tweed jacket and the waistcoat. My husband has more.

This thread has got me very nostalgic about growing up in N Yorkshire. As a teenager we would visit York for a day out and I loved D&B and Chick. When I was going to be a bridesmaid for my godmother we went to look at the dresses for inspiration and she bought the material to make similar ones. There was a lovely second hand clothes shop where I would beg my mum to take me. Bought lots of fifties dresses there and Tootle scarves. have some of the dresses now! Can’t remember what it was called.

Seeing as we have a lot of York nostalgia going on here does anyone remember the Vivien Smith boutique, on the river at the bottom of Micklegate?

I bought my first University cocktail dress there over 35 years ago. Black velvet, off the shoulder neckband with tudor style metal embroidery on it.

Yes I do Oooh. A friend got married in a D&B wedding dress, having drooled metaphorically through the window for many years.

I especially love the C&R coats' fullness.

There's a small business in Penzance, Handworked that makes and sells interesting clothing in good quality materials, though not as extreme in its quantities of fabric. I love this galleon fabric:

thehandworkedshop.com/shop/handworked-galleon-skirt

I really like it. I'm old and capable of being weird. The coats are to die for, imo, but I can't afford them!

I've been through phases, when younger, of really wanting stuff like this but not being able to find it, so I made some. I could pay for good fabrics back then. My voluminous creations were admired 😊

Saved to my phone screen I have about a hundred (I’m lying, it’s more) shops that are currently of interest, gathered vaguely in alphabetical order. It’s very satisfying that these three sit next to each other; between them they fulfil the (currently mostly fantasy) role D&B used to play in my (real) life.

Casey Casey
Cawley Studio
Cecilie Bahnsen

That Handworked skirt looks so like the sort of (admittedly very beautiful) thing Casey Casey would sell for three times the price.

Sometime last year I almost caused the heat death of the S&B universe by praising a custom made Cawley Studio bridal outfit. I found it breathtakingly pretty and indescribably retro-stylish. Posters literally (😜) wanted to tear me apart with pitchforks and have me devoured by rabid hogs. But Cawley Studio seem to me the natural inheritors and re/interpreters of the D&P aesthetic for the 21st century. (There is some relation to perhaps earlier C&R design.)

And just as I used to assume I would get married in a big puffy D&B gown, I now anticipate (with no concrete reason!) being a very elderly Cecilie Bahnsen bride. One day …