Even the Princess Royal isn’t safe from Britain’s descent into a nation of slobs

Her decision to channel Ian Brown will only worsen the nation’s contempt for a smart dress code – we must rise up against dressing down

Was it the recent bump on the head of Her Royal Highness or has she been keeping a fashion secret all these long years? Anne, 73-year-old only daughter of the late Queen, pitched up in Paris this week – she is president of the British Olympic Association after all – to visit the Olympic Village. And she came dressed as, er, Ian Brown; he of Stone Roses fame, of Altrincham, Greater Manchester. He who perfected the swagger and lugubrious gait that Liam Gallagher went on to proliferate, he of the bucket hat.
Except that now the Princess Royal has been photographed in a bucket hat, sunglasses, baggy t-shirt, dark and baggy trousers and trainers, one must defer to her and concede that it is now her look. I’ve only seen photographs so I don’t know if she wandered about the place, admiring the set up and uttering that Mancunian: “Aye, aye, aye.”
Perhaps Her Royal Highness, following the apparent argument she had with a horse on June 23, which left her with concussion and a bruise under her left eye, has discovered, as she makes a gradual return to duties, that she is channelling the spirit of the 1980s northern English music scene. Indeed like Ian Brown, the Princess Royal does seem to bear the philosophy of unchanging longevity. Travails have come their way but they remain as firm and proud British institutions.
Or it could be worse. It could be that this most proper and up-standing of Royals, this woman of decorum and duty, this most terrifying member of the Firm (don’t pretend you’d be anything other than petrified if you came face to face with her) is simply reflecting modern Britain. That is: our descent into a nation of slobs. 
For if the family of our beloved sovereign is down-with-the-kids casual, what hope is there for the rest of us? Surely we look to our Royal Family to be nice and stiff and formal, some of which can then trickle down and leave a semblance of civility with one’s subjects. And indeed the King does lead us by fabulous example, along with the Queen, always suited, tied, dressed and hatted. But the rabble around him – Kate aside, never anything less than exquisitely dressed and coiffed – have signified the drift to casual slovenliness with jeans, trainers and baseball caps as their uniform of choice.
And the drift has been urged on by our political leaders: Rishi Sunak was always keen to release photos of him working at his red boxes in a T-shirt and hoodie. And there was Boris Johnson whose jogging attire – I’m pretty sure he did it in boxer shorts – made him look like he wasn’t just running; he’d been chased out of the house (chopped up suits raining down on him as he fled). When he managed to wear a suit, he still looked like he’d got dressed in the dark and then wrestled a bear. And there was Tony Blair, who started the rot by making public appearances in shirt sleeves.
Britain’s descent into third-world status mirrors our dress-down trend. I keep coming across videos on X (formerly Twitter), heart-breaking in the nostalgia they offer: particularly of London in the 1950s, still all coats-and-hats-and-suits-and-dresses decorum and of children; girls in dresses and boys in shirts and shorts.
The easy and casual trainers and jeans that crept in over the late Sixties and Seventies gave way to tracksuits and ripped jeans and then the divine right to wear almost nothing at all. Today we no longer dress for any occasion. If you don a suit, people assume you’re due in court or have bagged a night-shift, doing some office-block security work.
The drift to dishevelment was, of course, accelerated by Covid, when people mooched about at home, during office hours, wearing pyjamas. And when you’ve done Zoom calls in pyjama bottoms at home why not try it at the office? You can’t criticise people for what they wear at work anyway nowadays without being cancelled so you might as well pitch up in a bikini.
You needn’t shave and your hungover-chic look is how you get ahead these days. So can we expect to be a grown-up country, if even the grown-ups are dressing like scruffy kids?
I’m just as to blame. I wore shorts to London on the train this week and to a restaurant. But I do keep a suit at a favourite haunt of mine. There’s a strict code of suit and tie, of which I strongly approve. I pitch up in jeans and trainers, nip through the tradesman’s entrance, then change. And I find the sight of chaps all smartly dressed a refreshing tonic.
Although it’s perhaps a reflection of the insane world we live in that I dress up smartly just to have a good lunch. And then it’s back to the trackies and trainers for Waitrose, school pick-up and the office.
There is some hope at the top in that Sir Keir Starmer seems to be pretty smartly dressed now at all times in public; all the better to clobber you with taxes. So let’s follow his lead. Forget dress-down (or indeed don’t bother dressing or even working on) Friday. How about dress-up Tuesday? Pop on some smart, well-tailored items and let the world know that, the odd Royal bucket hat aside, Britain means business.