Source: USA Today
Photo Source: Unsplash
Prince Charles, long admired for his natty wardrobe, opens up to British Vogue in a new interview about his mantra of "Buy once, buy well." He hates to throw anything away, would rather get something repaired than replaced, and even wore a 36-year-old morning coat to son Prince Harry's wedding to Meghan Markle in 2018.
Where does the Prince of Wales' sense of style come from, editor-in-chief Edward Enninful asked him as the two chatted by Zoom link between Charles' Dumfries House in Scotland and Enninful's office at Vogue House in London.
"I thought I was like a stopped clock – I’m right twice every 24 hours," Charles joked. "I’m very glad you think (the way I dress) has style. I mind about detail and color and things like that – and color combinations. I’m lucky because I can find marvelous people who are brilliant makers of the things that I appreciate, and because of that, I try to keep them going for longer."
The interview features a picture of the prince standing in the lush gardens of his country home, Highgrove House in Gloucestershire, wearing a 30-year-old linen jacket made for him by Anderson & Sheppard, the venerable Saville Row bespoke tailor.
Besides his style, Charles is famous for his disdain for waste, especially food waste, for his commitment to conservation and organic food production and for his prodigious charity work.
Thus, the interview in the magazine's December issue, aimed at promoting his interests in sustainable fashion, including his new project The Modern Artisans, a textile training program to link Italian design students and students in Scotland to teach high-end fashion and sewing skills.
Charles suggested his childhood summers at the royal family's Balmoral Castle in Scotland may have inspired him to resist disposable trends. "When I was a child, we used to take our shoes down to the cobbler in Scotland and would watch with fascination as he ripped the soles off and then put new soles on," Charles said.
Charles argued that wardrobe maintenance offers opportunities for the growth of small businesses to repair, maintain and reuse clothing. "Which is one of the reasons I’ve tried here, at Dumfries House, to start a kind of thrift market for precisely that purpose, where you can bring things in – whether it’s electrical appliances or anything – to be mended," he said.
COVID-19 may have allowed the locked-down world to heal a little, but it's not enough, Charles said.
"The tragedy, as we’ve heard recently, is that despite that, and despite lockdown, the rate of global warming is still accelerating," he said. "And we still haven’t been able to tackle this issue, which is so utterly crucial if we’re to avoid total catastrophe.
"We need to put nature back at the center of everything we do in a circular bio-economy...We can’t go on like this, but there are solutions, we just need to act – and now."
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