VINTAGE CHARLES

NOT A GREAT DEAL HAS BEEN HEARD from our future leader Prince Charles of late, perhaps, many people may have thought, because his ludicrous efforts to make us save the planet by such bizarre ideas as not washing our Port wine glasses, chewing our muesli more slowly or reading our “bedtime books” by candlelight have been forgotten after political interest in climate change dwindled when an Icelandic volcano emitted more carbon in three months than the entire Western world in 20 years (counting back as from today).

NOT SO FOR OUR INTREPID PLANET-SAVER! We now know that he has been hatching his latest cunning plan to enable the average person to make a small but significant contribution towards a healthier future.

THOSE WHO HAVE NOT READ this month’s edition of Vogue USA magazine (in honour of which I am adding a link to my Spartan set of further reading material) will imagine I am inventing Charles’ suggestions. I suggest one should buy the print edition to get the full force of the foolishness up with which we will be putting when Charles becomes king of England.

CHARLES TELLS US HE IS A KEEN UPCYCLER, and suggests we all follow his example. His pointers to greater sustainability and responsibility are as absurd as his grandmother’s suggestions to East Enders in London who were suffering from the Blitz bombing of their slums to grow their own vegetables to make sure they got enough vitamins each day.

SETS OF CUFFLINKS CAN BE MADE, as indeed his are, from the engines of our old cars. He has had someone do this with his old Aston Martin engine. Savings can also be made with shoes, like his shoes, “made from bales of leather salvaged from an eighteenth-century wreck off the Southwest of Britain. They are totally indestructible and will see me out."

EVEN OUTER GARMENTS can show our care for our planet, claims Charles, such as his “winter coat, modelled on one owned by his great-uncle, King Edward VIII. It was made for him by Les Bergquist, a tailor at the Savile Row firm Anderson & Sheppard.”

IGNORANT CRITICS OF PRINCE CHARLES will suggest that he is completely out of touch with today’s reality, that very few working-class people wear cufflinks nowadays and that making them out of a Honda engine does not have the same panache as cufflinks from an Aston Martin.

WHAT THESE PEOPLE ARE MISSING is that Prince Charles, in accepting this interview with Vogue Magazine, is finally settling into his position as a trend-setter rather than trend follower. No doubt everyone who is anyone will soon be flocking to Savile Row with photos of their grandfather’s clothes to have them copied.

ONE HOPES WE WILL SOON SEE VINTAGE REMAKES of mid- XX century mining helmets, donkey jackets, boiler suits, overalls, tanner’s leathers and prison outfits being worn by today’s young men as they go about their business in city centre offices.