If she had been in blue jeans and a sweatshirt, her life would certainly have been different. Victim of the first hour tabloids, Sarah Ferguson she was bullied for many reasons, including the alleged lack of taste. When she showed up at an event in one of her excessive, fluffy, exaggeratedly colorful, picturesque dresses, the press did not fail to criticize her also because, unfortunately for her, she competed with a bulky sister-in-law like Diana who from the very first moment at court had understood how to use fashion to his advantage.
On the contrary, the informal clothing of the Duchess of York (unfairly labeled as Duchess of Pork from those wretched newspapers) was that of a modern girl, in step with London times. At that time in the British capital to be fashionable you had to be one Sloane Ranger and Sarah Ferguson was a perfect example of this. For many years she has maintained that style, now entangled in her DNA, and has shown it off every time she didn’t have to dress up for a real commitment.
Like the time she went to class to get her flying license at Benson Air Force Base, south of Oxford. Despite the spartan occasion, she didn’t give up on her beloved floral patterns, putting on a pair of light blue good girl pants and a sweatshirt of the same color. Without that aviator jacket, she would be ready for tea in South Kensington. A sloanie like many others, only able to fly a helicopter.
Not only sumptuous dresses feed the great stories of royal dresses and, to speak of the irreverent Sarah Ferguson we can start with a pair of pants that tell its personality more than those soap opera dresses. A long way from Fergie, all the other women of the Windsor household. The friend Diana was born graceful and with an innate sense of style as demonstrated by theElvis dress and, after her, on her trail but in a different way Kate Middleton that she turned to Jenny Packham to find his personal Catherine Walker e Meghan Markle, the American Duchess who stunned everyone with a creation of compatriot Oscar de la Renta on tour in Australia.
It is not part of the same league there Queen Elizabeth and its load of symbols represented by the ecumenical Coronation dress and, in part, not even the Crown Princess Victoria who, knowing the importance of his fate, plays his cards very well by catching up an old dress by Nina Ricci from the mother’s wardrobe, the queen Silvia. And then there are the two born commoner that continue to dictate the real fashion world: one is Letizia ortiz who got engaged to Felipe of Spain with a white Armani suit and the other is Mary of Denmark who sanctifies the holidays with a velvet dress burgundy between sustainability and versatility. Who has definitely left a mark in the (royal) costume is Grace Kelly: the actress became princess through a sartorial masterpiece signed by Christian Dior.
That Sarah and Andrea was not a normal couple could also be guessed from the list of gifts received for the wedding. When in the summer of 1986 the two newlyweds began to unwrap the gifts, including ceramics, jewels and endless tea sets, they found a 40-hour training course to learn how to fly the helicopter worth about $ 15,000 offered by the wealthy Lord Hanson. The coupon was obviously aimed at the Duchess of York because Andrea, a naval officer, was a Royal Navy helicopter pilot and in that role had fought the war on the Falklands in the early years of the decade in which he married. Among the declarations of Sarah, still only engaged, the chronicles record: “Flying is her life and I want to be part of her life”.
After a year and a few months, at Benson Air Force Base, south of Oxford, pyrotechnics Fergie was in the process of receiving his license as a helicopter pilot. “Now I know exactly what he talks about when he goes out for military sorties, that’s what I wanted to achieve,” the enamored Duchess told reporters. If there’s one thing he’s never done, it’s put his personality aside. Posing next to the model Bell Jet Ranger, Sarah Ferguson showed up dressed, who knows, maybe randomly or maybe not, dressed as Sloane Ranger. Today those pants may seem a little naïve considering the context but flying over the English countryside was the real Sarah Ferguson, not what others would have liked her to be.
To be sloanie it was not only a question of style but also of wealth. The Sloane Ranger they were a kind of tribe posh that raged in the capital but that with its codes had conquered the whole country. To be authentic, however, you had to come from certain neighborhoods and have at least one king or queen as a relative, even if it was on the last branch of the family tree. The name in fact brings together Sloane Square, a square in affluent Chelsea, and a well-known figure on British television.
If we are now able to speak with knowledge of the facts, it is because in 1982, journalists Ann Barr and Peter York gave the essentials to the press The official Sloane Ranger handbook. The manual explored in depth the phenomenon, born more or less in 1975, which has both a feminine and a masculine declination. As for the female Sloane Ranger, don’t bother the undisputed queen who was obviously Diana (a portrait of him stands out on the cover of bestseller), just look at the photographs of Fergie taken when he attended those sports tournaments in which the aristocrats gathered and, hopefully, got engaged in order to make a good marriage between people of the same circle (you know the dynamics of Four weddings and a funeral? Here, that).
The uniform included more or less gods floral dresses probably made with Liberty prints, pleated skirts, shirts with wide collars, Hermès scarf to put on your head, loafers by Gucci, a pearl necklace and a velvet padded headband.
The blue navy was the standard color, the blazer with golden buttons a must perhaps worn with a pair of jeans, a pullover tied on the shoulders or a patterned sweater ditto. The New York Times in 1984 he dealt with the question that seemed related to style preppy in vogue in the United States. The journalist Erica Brown he had written a piece in which he walked around London reporting all the shops where the sloanies come Sarah: Monsoon for the skirts, Caroline charles, Rega, Joseph, Rodier, Jaeger for day and evening outfits, jeans and casual wear from Shaws. These are all names that perhaps we Italians say little. To favor an image to those of Generation X we could give as a reference Sharon Zampetti from The boys of the 3rd C: a more sweetened version of the scented Cacharel paninara, with the Naj Oleari satchel, the collar on the sweatshirt probably Best Company and the Timberlands instead of the moccasin.
The sloanie model, as described in The official Sloane Ranger handbook, worked in an art gallery or in the publishing world while the male counterpart, who tended to be rich in family, could support themselves with landed properties or could optionally work in finance or could earn a living as an officer.
Will be leafing through the manual that had put it on the cover that Diana thought of being a Cupid between Sarah and Andrea. The place chosen to shoot the arrow between two who, despite having known each other for some time, seemed to be the two parts of the apple, could only be Ascot.
As long as Fergie was some sort of lady-in-waiting to her friend the princess, everything was fine but it was when the spotlight turned on the red Sarah that things started to get on fire. There was no time that she was not targeted, as well as for the silhouette, also for the style choices. In fact, her extravagant clothes really were, and perhaps the Duchess was not understood in all her exuberance, an exuberance that was fed by her personal assistant.
Jane Andrews she was hired at the palace in 1988. She was a fashion student who answered a job ad in a newspaper, not knowing that Sarah Ferguson would be the employer. Of modest origins, she had immediately become indispensable for the Duchess. It had come to a point of emulation that they happened to be mistaken for sisters.
What interested in what today we would call trivially stylist it wasn’t so much that Fergie made a good impression in society as it was her own personal social rise. If the outfits for bizzaria are memorable, the brands that designed them are less so: the web, unlike what happens for Diana, hardly gives us a name to link to one of those taffeta, satin and tulle meringues. That personal dresser, as far as style is concerned, she was a real killer for the Duchess.
Unfortunately, Jane Andrews was a murderer in name and in fact. Away from the royal house, fired for a cost cut, she got engaged to a wealthy businessman, thus thinking of settling down. But when he refused to marry her, she hit him in his sleep with a cricket bat, finishing him with a kitchen knife in the chest. On balance, Fergie also went well as she only killed her wardrobe in the end. In recent years, the former assistant has been in and out of prison: she was once pinched selling royal memorabilia at a stall, who knows if there were any accessories that belonged to the Duchess.
Time is a gentleman. For Sarah Ferguson, the time has come to “take back all that is his“. The press has become nostalgic for those 80s looks so much that Caroline Leaper of Telegraph claims that the biggest scandal of The Crown was to have omitted Fergie’s exaggerated style from the story. But for the Duchess of York that is the past. Now she is a grandmother who reads fairy tales to children on Instagram with funny caps and after what she suffered from all that gossip, she is now so resolved and in shape that she doesn’t care if someone makes fun of her being knowingly funny.
For his 60th birthday, he announced that he would renew his helicopter pilot license, a project likely interrupted by the pandemic. Now that style gives Sloane Ranger is back in fashion thanks to it-girl come Alexa Chung e Olivia Palermo and actresses like Emma Corrin e Katherine Ryan, who knows if the sweatshirt and floral trousers are still in the wardrobe ready to revive the old glories. However, even if the clothes were the same, a difference would be substantial. Now Sarah Ferguson would fly over London for herself and certainly not for her dull prince.
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