Look, it’s been a good run. But as the 2024 British festival season enters its last gasp, it’s increasingly apparent that the wellington boot – that lingering staple of the textbook look – is no longer the footwear of choice for the fashion set when they’re in glamping mode.
Almost 20 years after Kate Moss was stalking Somerset in knee-high Hunters and a stretchy gold minidress, another perennial icon of festival style, Alexa Chung, was packing a pair of Western-inspired black leather boots to wear with her butter-yellow slip in the VIP area at Glasto in June.
The pattern continued at Wilderness over the weekend, where there were easily as many cowboy boots in the Audi Haven as there will be at Copenhagen Fashion Week, which kicks off today in the Danish capital. (One exception? James Norton, who was in full gap year mode in printed trousers and Birks.)
Sophie Turner, for her part, picked a low-key combination of linen shirt, tiny shorts and trainers, her blonde hair thrown up in a claw clip. The former British Vogue cover star was keeping a low-profile at the festival with her boyfriend, Peregrine Pearson (“I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time,” Turner told Chioma Nnadi in June – and she looked it), but her denim Louis Vuitton shoulder bag was a dead giveaway.
.JPG)
Granted, it was 30 degrees, but glorious sunshine has never prevented the girls from reaching for rubber wellies in years gone by. (Plus, a Paris Texas Rosario boot is hardly a well-ventilated alternative.) British Vogue’s own Laura Hawkins has been wearing her silver leather Fendi cowboy boots from autumn/winter 2018 to festivals for a few summers now, and insists they’re the perfect combination of sophisticated and fun – not to mention flattering, thanks to the ever so slightly elevated heel.
Blame those clips of Bella Hadid riding rodeo – or chalk it up to Cowboy Carter – but wellies, it seems, are no longer the essential festival boot. So, is it time to consign your waders to the back of the wardrobe for good? Not quite – if only for the sake of practicality. Trends come and go, but Britain’s temperamental weather is forever.
