The woman who has dressed the Revival for decades

How long did you work with Goodwood?

[Before retiring at the start of 2022] I've been involved with Goodwood in various guises for over 20 years. When I finished training as an actor at Chichester College, I enjoyed my time so much that I applied for the job of Wardrobe Mistress there, not knowing anything about it and just wanting to be around the performing arts department because it was such fun. I got the job. Gradually that job tailed off and the Goodwood connection grew. That was 22 years ago!

Tell us about your first Goodwood Revival

I've done all the Revivals except the first one in 1998. Back then, we only had a very few actors on site, and they were all student actors from the college. They were just pilots and nurses and officers on the airfield – I think for the first Revival we had 16 in total. This year's cast list at the moment is just knocking on the door of 200. And we're not done yet!

I remember being a WI lady, selling strawberries and cream. I was also an owner of a Bavarian ski lodge with my college tutor. We were handed two St. Bernard dogs and some beer towels –  I remember thinking ‘why do we want the beer towels?’ – later I discovered it was to clean up the dogs’ slobber and to protect guests’ outfits!

What did a normal Revival day look like for you?

There are no normal days in the run up to Revival – they don't exist! It's a complete mishmash of casting the actors, deciding what they're going to do, what they're going to wear, sourcing all the costumes that we haven't got in stock, planning rehearsals, booking choreographers, having casting meetings. And then, helping plan the party and what the waiters and waitresses are going to wear. I did quite a lot of the designs myself and I’ve designed some of the sets, too.

What happens the rest of the year?

Revival is our biggest event but it's certainly not our only one. We do about 80 performance days a year. I run the Goodwood Actors Guild, which is 400 plus actors that are on our books and available to work with us. It can be anything from coordinating a photoshoot down at the aerodrome for a couple of hours, to three days filming with Downton Abbey, which required 100 extras. It's really different ends of the scale.

Tell us about sourcing Revival costumes…

If I go past a charity shop, I can't help looking, just in case anything sings to me on the rail. eBay is a good place if I've got something specific that I’m looking for or vintage kilos sales where you just chuck stuff in a bin liner and they charge you by the kilo. I try to go to Kerry Taylor Auctions in London at least once a year and I might get some real provenance pieces there. A lot of stuff gets donated, too, and some pieces we make. The retro market has improved a lot in the last five years, so the quality of the clothing you get is a lot better so I also have wholesale accounts with a few retro suppliers. I recently went to Toronto on holiday because my husband went there on business and told me that there was a street solely of vintage clothing shops, so I went and joined him. I got a beautiful dress there that we used for the first time in 2021.

What’s one thing about Goodwood Revival that nobody else knows?

I think people just don't realise the scale of the operation. We’re thinking about the next Revival as soon as we finish the last one. I think one thing I would say is the fun that we have in the meetings with the Duke. I think people must walk past the boardroom sometimes and wonder what on earth is going on! When we first start discussing ideas we go off on all sorts of tangents and have some fantastically funny ideas. Then we have to kind of get serious – we've said we're going to build Stonehenge, now we're going to actually do it. It's all about having the idea first and then thinking about how we execute it.

What is it that drives your passion for vintage?

What I love is to have someone come for a fitting, and I'll find a dress that I know will totally sing on them. I've had people in tears because they loved what I put them in and that's a joyous thing to do, especially if you've got someone who's not body confident and you make them feel beautiful. That's a real treasure.

Do you have a favourite era or style icon?

I do like the ’60s. I love Sally Tuffin, Marion Foal, John Bates – if you can get it. But I also love things like 1950s Horrockses; the beautiful dresses that Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth wore that were from a company that used to make sheets and pillow cases and moved into making the most beautiful prints and most beautiful flair dresses. So one of my favourite things to wear is a Horrockses dress that just about fits me still.

There’s around 12,000 pieces in the Goodwood costume department – if you could keep only, what would you keep?

All of them – they're my babies. I even talk to them and say: ‘hello my darlings’ and when I go home at the weekend I say: ‘play nicely, everybody’. If I could only keep one, I think the Horrockses dress.

What makes Revival so special?

Because it's for everybody. It's not just for the motoring enthusiast. A guest can come along and just be there because they love dressing up. Some women spend all year planning their outfits and they love it. We've got a group of ladies whose husbands go off and sit in the grandstand and watch the racing and they sit on the Richmond lawn and drink Champagne and watch people go by, and it's bliss. There's so many little jewels of theatre that we pop all over the place, too, you never know what's going to happen.

Have you any wise words for guests who are coming to their first Revival?

Enjoy yourself. Don’t put pressure on yourself, but do dress up. If you come and you don’t dress up, you'll likely feel very out of place! Almost everyone's got a little shift dress or something like that in their wardrobe. Add a string of pearls, a pair of gloves, a pillbox hat and a block heel with a little handbag and you're done. Or a pair of Capri pants with a little check shirt tied up and a ponytail or a hairband and you’re ’50s. For men, a pair of chinos, a plain shirt and tie and a nice flat cap and they're done.

This year at the Revival, Dandy Wellington will lead the Vintage Style Not Vintage Values series of talks in the Revive and Thrive Village. Book your tickets now for a chance to meet his wonderful community of vintage icons.

Photography by Toby Adamson, Nicole Hains, Chris Ison and Jochen Van Cauwenberge.