In 1970, when the Range Rover took its bow, country-based Sloane parentals might have had an old Land Rover if there was a farm, woodlands or horses involved, and a succession of grubby yet dependable Ford Granada estates for the road. They’d be unlikely to sweep away these faithful old bangers for a shiny new Rangie, especially when the Aga was threatening to give up the ghost at any time.

After what had seemed like decades of an intellectual moratorium on big picture discussion of class and inequality, it was everywhere (I’d been told by broadcasters before 2008 “that’s so not today’s issue,” when I’d wanted to look at the rich as anything but lifestyle options, and immediately after 2008 it was off the table). Ann was born in London, the second of four children of a Canadian mother, Margaret Gordon, and a Scottish father, Andrew Greig Barr. Ann’s grandfather, also called Andrew Greig Barr, invented the soft drink Irn-Bru, which still has the Barr name on the logo. In 1939, at the start of the second world war, Margaret took her children to Montreal and put Ann into a private school called the Study, where Margaret had previously been head girl and had a house named after her. When Diana Spencer began to appear in newspapers in the summer of 1980, Sloane Ranger style started to gallop down to the high streets,” York has noted. “Suddenly, a Sloane – as we saw her – was the most interesting and publicised person in the world.” And one, perhaps, ripe for gentle pastiche. The new-decade Range Rover lifestyle, with its air-conditioning, leather upholstery, massive carphones and alloy wheels arrived at precisely the right moment for the 1980s boom in the City of London. That greed-is-good explosion saw bonus-boosted ripples out through Belgravia, Kensington and Fulham, and even over the river to Battersea and Wandsworth. Preppies and Sloanes became icons around the same moment. Both books demonstrated in satirical—if loving—terms, that while status was something with which you were born, the trappings and wardrobe of a certain kind of social elite could be practiced and adopted. Who needs a country estate in Surrey or Kennebunkport when you have a handbook and the J.Crew catalogue? Exclusion became aspiration.

Yet Sloanes, despite having a very distinctive style of their own, were decidedly anti-fashion, opting for Barbour instead of Bond Street. So for their style to appear in high fashion stores today seems perverse. In fact, Sloane Ranger fashion was as far away as you could get from anything European (very suspicious in the eyes of most 1980s toffs). When York’s Sloane Ranger Handbook was published, it described the ubiquitous pie-crust collars, colourful loafers, velvet Alice bands and navy-blue gilets as “middle-aged dressing for young people”. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

He published a series of essays in social and cultural observation in the magazine Harpers & Queen during the late 1970s. Written in the style of Tom Wolfe's new journalism, these were collected in the book Style Wars (1980). Following the success of his collaboration with Ann Barr, The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook (1982), itself an extension of such social observation, he became a media commentator on English social trends and traits. A further collection of essays, Modern Times, was published in 1984. Peter York's Eighties (1996), this time co-authored with Charles Jennings, was both a book and a BBC television series. [3] [4] The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, written by Ann Barr and Peter York, was first published in 1982 The costumes are among the show’s greatest delights. Moments into the first episode, we understand their importance when Lady Violet (played by Ruth Gemmell) trills, “Your dresses have arrived!”, prompting her daughters to stampede from one drawing room to another to examine their ensembles for an audience with the Queen. “This one is quite ravishing,” Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) declares of a white satin gown with an empire waist, puff-sleeves and delicate gold embroidery. Two years ago, over coffee in a literary agent’s Soho office, I was asked if I would be interested in collaborating with the style-writer Peter York on a new version of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook. (Not much of a boast, I realise.) Aside from the scant appeal of working on a retread, I remembered all too clearly how the original book fell on my generation of privately educated undergraduates in the early 1980s like an asteroid from space, releasing a virulent pathogen. The term is a pun based on references to Sloane Square, a location in Chelsea, London, famed for the wealth of its residents and frequenters, and the television character The Lone Ranger.My first writing about Sloanes – massively edited and improved by Ann, in Harpers & Queen magazine as was (it’s now called Harper’s Bazaar) – was a huge hit in a relatively small pond: Sloane Land itself and among London media types. It wasn’t Big in Barnsley or Bolton then. York, Peter (11 January 1996). Peter York's Eighties – tie-in with television series. BBC Books. ISBN 0-56337-1919. The Regency, which lasted from 1811 to 1820, was a period of great excitement and social development. It was a time that sprung out of deep unrest – King George III having been deemed too “mad” to rule, and his son (the eventual George IV) stepping in as Regent. Under him, Britain flourished, as the Prince of Wales assumed the role of patron for emerging artists, writers and scientists. The time we’re looking at, Britain was coming out of the terribleness of the late 1970s and an enormous [economic] depression," says York. "It was a combination of escapism and aspiration.” But arguably the genesis of the Sloane was not in Peter Jones but in the US. Forty years ago saw the publication of The Official Preppy Handbook, a tongue-in-cheek study of the styles and mores of those scions of Ivy League colleges, the WASPs – white anglo-saxon protestants – who populated Martha’s Vineyard in the summer, and the East Coast’s more salubrious homes and businesses the rest of the year.