Lucy Melford: 1988 and all that

Here's an interesting slice of social history. I have before me a copy of The Field magazine for October 1988. This is the front cover:

This was - still is? - a magazine primarily aimed at well-off male landowners and (to some extent) their wives, containing serious articles on various aspects of country living, especially the sporting side of it. I think I found this copy in the attic of one of the houses I have owned. It's a fascinating glimpse of what these gilded people might have read in 1988. I can't tell whether it's truly a mirror of actual high-level country living, or whether it is at least partly aspirational. I suppose it depends on how you are placed, and who you think you are. I've seen copies of The Field in private hospitals, and sporting hotels (such as fishing hotels in the West Country and the Highlands). Perhaps something can be deduced from that.

Not every landowner can have enough money, or the inclination, to care about the things shown in this magazine. It's a world I have rubbed shoulders with only on the odd occasion. I've nothing against it. But even if I had the necessary means, or the connections, or the upbringing, to rub along with the magazine's select group of readers, I'd probably still do my own thing. Owning a lovely horse that I can ride expertly; owning a pair of well-matched and well-trained hounds; owning a fine handmade shotgun, and able to shoot well with it; needing the best waterproof jacket, or the best boots: I do get it. But none of those things are useful in my own world, except the jacket and boots.

In this post I'm concentrating on what that copy of The Field had to say about what to wear in 1988. I think it's most revealing.

I also refer to another source of material from 1988: an episode of Inspector Morse that aired on 19th January 1989, but clearly filmed during the summer or autumn of 1988, called Deceived by Flight. It's about a murder made to look like a suicide, with an Oxford university college cricket tour in the background. The victim was one of the Gentleman players, well-off and urbane but without the snobbishness shown by another so-called Gentleman (the one who done it, m'lud). Morse investigates, and there are plenty of scenes where the two women who attempt to charm him - one being an undercover Customs & Excise officer, the other the victim's wife (whose lover did the deed) - show off their different clothing tastes.

Let's however look first at what The Field in 1988 looked like, if you open the glossy pages of my copy. There's an editorial about yobbish behaviour spoiling the game. Opposite it, a 'clever' cigarette advertisement.

Cigarettes and booze could still be advertised in magazines. Here are ads for a single malt (suggesting the successful salmon fisherman), and a whisky liqueur (relaxed candlelit sophistication in female company).

Sporting guns for the well-heeled country gentleman are much to the fore.

And not just for adults. Here's an ad for a toy shotgun - to whet the 'young sportsman's' appetite for shooting. For boys aged four to nine. Presumably ten year olds graduate to the real thing.

Fashionable shooting clothing, and other gear, for both him and her also features.

Not only shooting, of course. Horse ownership and its accoutrements is another big topic.

And naturally, waterproof jackets by Barbour and others are de rigueur.

The picture above, of four men in Barbour jackets, isn't an ad. It's part of an article about the work of the RSPB, and they are bigwigs in the bird-preservation world. All are wearing ties, you notice. Indeed, all are wearing suits under their waterproof jackets. Suits were important. The right suit conferred prestige, authority, and self-assurance on the right man. There's an article about just such a man getting a properly-cut town suit from a Savile Row tailor. A young peer.

He'd need the right watch to go with it, of course...

What about somewhere to live? Just like (say) Country Life, this October 1988 issue of The Field has some property pages, with grand houses - and shooting estates - like these on offer.

I'd be surprised if the mixture of articles and ads would be very different in a modern issue of The Field. Why would anything have changed? Let's now look at what was fashionable to wear in late 1988, according to The Field, if you lived in the country and had leisure and money.

Gosh, what a lifestyle. Which scene would suit you best, for a regular diet? Me, the breakfast picture, although I concede that the others have their own allure, especially the off-to-the-opera shot. Nice house, too. I wonder if a picture like this is hung somewhere inside?

There was however one ad that offered a product that was cutting-edge for the time, but now looks ludicrously old-fashioned, almost a joke. An ad for the latest mobile phone. Here it is. Remember, this was super-up-to-date in 1988.

We have come a long way, haven't we? It's sobering to realise that even ten years later, in 1998, it was by no means usual to own a mobile phone, even though they had all become much smaller and lighter. I scorned them for a long while, and didn't buy one until 2001, and only so that I wouldn't be incommunicado when commuting to London by train. It was a cheap 2G affair from Woolworths, good only for voice calls and texts and something called WAP, but handy all the same. Primitive now; but it would have astounded any buyer of the brick phone in the ad above.

And would you believe it, I spotted the brick when watching that episode of Inspector Morse! Look at these scenes. The murder-victim-to-be is speaking to Morse from an Oxford college guest room.

And here he is again, phoning from his car.

The thing looks like a Second World War walkie-talkie, as seen on Omaha Beach or Iwo Jima, only slightly smaller. Yet, as I say, it was cutting-edge: the only alternative way to phone from a car was with a built-in wired phone like the one Morse is using in his rather spartan office (which bears a striking resemblance to my own room at every tax office I served in, except the last). If you buy something from Carphone Warehouse (at a Currys superstore say, or online) the odd name is explained if you are aware that the company began in 1989 as literally a seller of car-phone installations, although it rapidly expanded into more general telecommunication and computer marketing.

The same episode of Inspector Morse has him pursued by two women, who for different reasons want to keep tabs on his investigation. Morse, who never has much luck with the ladies, is flattered. Here's one of the ladies, the murder victim's wife.

Here's the other, an undercover Customs & Excise officer on a drugs case, who has a passion for cricket (really?), explaining to Morse why she likes it so much.

Shortly afterwards the two women confront each other. The 'grieving' wife of the murdered man was hoping to catch Morse alone, but must exchange polite words instead. At least she is nattily dressed for the summer sunshine.

The presence of the C&E lady (bottom left) is desperately unwelcome, but the widow is able to square up to the challenge with her shoulder pads. That broad-shouldered look was all the rage. I disliked it. It wasn't a look that, in truth, looked great on many women, and it left you open to the 'she's only trying to be a man' jibe, unless you genuinely had personality and presence and could carry it off. It was all too easy to look ridiculous. And afterwards, when the fashion passed, all those shoulder-padded jackets were unwearable.

I was thirty-six in 1988. It's now thirty-six years later. Sometimes one keeps the odd item of clothing or jewellery from way back, but I genuinely haven't anything of the kind to reveal. That's a pity. Well, here are some ordinary people, photographed in 1988. And here's the challenge: spot the shoulder pads.

First, Mum and Dad and their friends on a bowling holiday with a difference - they were being filmed for a BBC TV series: