E
veryone knows that people who attend festivals in the UK aren’t messing around. A feeble Californian unused to the elements, I turned up to my first UK weekender head to toe in all the wrong clothes. Where I should have brought warming but chic layers, I came with bare shoulders and no jacket. Where I should have researched fashionable but supportive shoes, I turned up in dainty sandals. Where it might have been wise to pack both a raincoat and a sunhat, I brought only trendy (and hardly UV safe) sunnies. As the rain whipped around me, the mud caked my ankles and my feet throbbed, I was cursing the Coachella influencers who had inspired my outfit.
Instead I should have been paying attention to the clever way that the UK’s fashionable festivalgoers weave together form and function to make sure they have the best time possible while still bringing personal style into the equation. It’s a tricky line to navigate. Sure, you’ll need sensible shoes. But the good news is there’s never been a cooler array of sensible shoes on the market. Sure, you’ll need a raincoat — but what if that raincoat was made by the queen of fashionable festival attire herself, Alexa Chung? Of course you’ll want a hat to protect yourself from the sun, but what if that hat could take you from the soggy glades of Glastonbury to, say, the sizzling beach clubs of Monaco?
