Country grammar
It was so silly it was brilliant.
Sometime last month, while watching The X Factor, a yogurt ad came on. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in that the music video featured cheerful farmers rapping about being “down with the Soil Association” and “rolling in my Massey on a summer’s day.” The £5m campaign was for Yeo Valley, a British organic dairy supplier that wanted to broaden its appeal by showing that it was willing to not take itself too seriously.
The ridiculously catchy 60-second spot has since become a viral hit. Yeo Valley has followed through by setting up a YeoTube channel on YouTube, which will host a range of video clips about life at the farm as well as additional music videos. The advertisement is clever not only because it trumpets the company’s organic credentials in a rather fun way; style-wise it is perfect for the season as the English country look was a key theme throughout the European and American autumn/winter collections.
Dizzee Rascal has nothing to worry about: Meet Yeo Valley’s rapping farmers.Agriculture Subculture
As items of clothing once reserved for mucking out the chicken coop have been steadily urbanized by the likes of Coco Sumner, Lily Allen and Alexa Chung, the vogue for all things heritage shows no signs of stopping. Rugged Barbour jackets, cords, Wellington boots and jodhpurs — traditionally reserved for royals — are now officially trendy, at first favored by the Glastonbury crowd and lately integral to the “Hackney farmer” subculture in artsy east London.
Even Harris Tweed, the iconic fabric handwoven in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland since the mid-19th century, is gaining 21st century cred. The burly fabric was the subject of Tweed, a BBC4 series which took a look at the lives of the Scottish sheep herders who weave it using pedal-powered looms. Nike has also issued its second collaboration with Harris Tweed in October, the Nike Air Royalty, a masterful blend of tradition and technology.
Earthy: The Nike Air Royalty Harris Tweed mixes the iconic fabric with a premium brown leather, creating a very unique silhouette.Blair Waldorf Goes To Nashville
On the other side of the Atlantic, the country trend is being articulated but with a completely different twang. Hollywood invaded Nashville during last week’s 44th Annual Country Music Association Awards, as Gwyneth Paltrow performed the title track from her forthcoming film, Country Strong. The movie, set to hit US theaters in 2011, is about a rising singer-songwriter (Tron Legacy’s Garrett Hedlund) who gets involved with a fallen country star (Gwyneth Paltrow). Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester is there to reel in the young’uns, playing beauty-queen-turned-singer Chiles Stanton.
For fox-hunting fashionistas: The collaboration between classic British outdoor clothing company Barbour and Japanese designer Tokihito Yoshida continues for another season, this time merging their classic jackets with modern technical outerwear.Country music may be seen as a little too right-wing for most people’s tastes but the genre is proving to be strong. The New York Times recently ran an article about Taylor Swift, whose sophomore album “Speak Now” sold 1,047,000 copies in the United States in its first week. “Ms. Taylor’s success has capped a notable year for country music, with a streak of recent No. 1’s on the Billboard album chart and Lady Antebellum’s ‘Need You Now’ the second-best seller of the year so far,” wrote Ben Sisario.
Whether it’s part of a move towards a more earthy way of living or a mere blip on the marketing radar, it seems that country style is being twisted and subverted to suit city dwellers. Forget rapping English farmers – Blair Waldorf going all Achy Breaky Heart is something to watch out for. Like I said, it’s so silly it could just be brilliant.
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