Goodwood Revival - celebrating elegance and craftsmanship
Dandy Wellington, bandleader, producer, presenter and style activist, will once again be crossing the Atlantic to be at the heart of Goodwood Revival (September 12-14).
New York-based Dandy has been part of the Revival Style Stage line-up since 2022 and leads the Vintage Style Not Vintage Values conversation, a key element of the new Revival fashion content. He is back this September to present the Best Dressed competition and will also be interviewing a variety of style icons on the Revival Style Stage, including Dita Von Teese, Zandra Rhodes, Gabriela Hearst, author Hannah Rogers and V&A curator Jessica Harpley.
Tickets on https://www.goodwood.com/motorsport/goodwood-revival/tickets-and-packages/
“For me I have been coming to Goodwood for about five years,” Dandy said. “I was brought over to headline and be part of the spearhead team for the Revive & Thrive village. It is an area within Goodwood where we focus on sustainability. We do make do and mend and the kinds of things that were at their height after World War Two. The area is not just focused on sustainability. It is also focused on fashion and vintage style and vintage values. It's about elegance and craftsmanship and a whole lot of different things. It is looking backwards at community and culture and representation.
“There is a lot of rose-coloured glasses approach to the past and the fact is that the past was often very, very difficult, certainly for people of colour but my thought process is how do we take the elegance that we loved in the past and also the craftsmanship? There are clothes that I own that are 100 years old and the fact is if it is well made, it is worth celebrating, just like things such as kindness and community, those things that are timeless.”
And that's the essence of Dandy’s approach to the past: “It is about taking the good and dispensing with the bad. We look backwards not to go backwards but to move forwards, and that's the joy of having history and knowing history: you can learn from it. And that's the core of what we do within the community at Goodwood. It's about welcoming people and listening to their various stories. It's about what they bring and putting them at the forefront. Goodwood is the largest vintage racing event in the world and I love that aesthetic and I love that feeling. It's so beautiful, the culture with the brilliant stories and the wonderful personalities.”
As for the attraction of vintage fashion: “It is the attention to detail. It is the tailoring. I'm a huge fan of tailoring particularly from the golden age of menswear in the interwar era. There was a surge of excitement around tailored clothing. There was a thirst for living life to the full for all these people that had come back from World War One. They were living in a world that they had almost died trying to save and they were thinking how could they step up. It's about wanting to live life all the more, and clothing became so much more accessible certainly in terms of tailoring.”
And that's what this is about: “It's the opportunity for people to really engage with quality clothing made from natural fibres, stuff that can be repaired. It is important to buy clothes that inspire you and then to care for them so that they can continue to inspire others. Everything that you put out into the world reverberates.”
It is a rejection of the disposable: “When you care for a piece of clothing, especially if it is second-hand, especially if it is something that someone else has cared for before you, then you are now the custodian and it is a piece of history that you are wearing.”