Seasonal style

Hannah Betts picks her outfits for summer socials

AGE. IT DOES THINGS TO YOU. One minute, one has no idea what “the season” is, reserving summer for sex and sleep. The next, one is hobbing one’s nob off with the rest of the ton at flower shows, picnics purporting to be country-house opera, and wedding after interminable wedding. From the seventeenth century onwards, landowning clans left their country piles in late spring to amuse themselves while their menfolk festered about Parliament. Think parties and picnics, bashes and balls, sporting, gardening and “artistic” events (term used necessarily loosely). Between the end of Easter until no later than August 12th, anyone who was anyone could be found doing everything; then headed north to kill stuff. Balzac’s 1837 novel, La Muse du département, features a scathing account of this brief spell…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2024

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