Have you heard of Gorpcore? No, neither had I until the weekend when visitors from the North West told me about the latest ‘fashion’ trend in my old haunts of Prestbury and Alderley Edge in Cheshire.
Gorpcore, you’ll be puzzled to learn, matches rugged clothing with suburban settings: expensive hiking boots and brightly coloured, high-tech outerwear for a trip to the shops.
Think £500 for a fleece: great news for North Face, Arc’teryx and other pricey brands you’d associate with surviving the Eiger or the Jungfrau, not downtown Prestbury.
I gathered that the word Gorpcore comes from ‘Good Ol Raisins and Peanuts,’ snack food popular with outdoorsy types.
Maybe ‘Gawpcore’ would be a better spelling when the gear is worn by types who like sitting outside smart coffee shops in Alderley Edge to watch the Bentleys and Ferraris (with tinted windows, naturally) roll by and spot celebs.
Gorpcore – and much else besides – is driven by ITV’s ever-popular Real Housewives of Cheshire series which, it just so happens, is filmed in and around the villages where I used to live.
I’m not pretending that northern Cheshire is new to celebrity or to wealth, or that it hasn’t been considered a little flash from time to time.
One departing vicar from down the road in Wilmslow famously described local residents as ‘greedy, grasping and godless’ – and that was well before Real Housewives first lowered the tone.
Nutritionist and author Gabriela Peacock, who is close friends with Princess Beatrice, is set to star in the Costwolds-based reality show
Sophie Stanbury is also rumoured to have signed up for the show after previously appearing in the reality series Ladies of London
David and Victoria Beckham lived near us in Cheshire when he was playing for Manchester United.
I’m told the minibus taking pupils back home from an all-girls school in Alderley Edge would occasionally pull up alongside the England captain at traffic lights. They’d shout to him from the windows – and he would unfailingly wave back with a shy smile and courteous, ‘hi girls’.
When, occasionally, Beckham made the mistake of filling up at a garage opposite the school at home time, he was surrounded by a gang of girls thrusting exercise books towards him for an autograph. He would always oblige.
Alderley Edge is little more than a village, but it had its own upmarket night club, Brasingamens, which boasted not only Beckham, but Cristiano Ronaldo and singer/songwriter Pharrell Williams as regulars. It was said that more Champagne was sold in Prestbury and Alderley Edge than anywhere else in the country on a Saturday night.
But that was a very different time – a time when we’d actually heard of the celebrities involved. Life in the villages has taken a turn for the worse since then, and particularly since Real Housewives first appeared ten years ago.
This, remember, is the show that treated us to such inspirational characters as Dawn Ward, the WAG whose starring role brought us unsavoury dramas including a conviction for assault and rampaging debt. Other wives have helped lower the tone with their own antics and financial crises.
Today, north Cheshire is drowning in an ocean of booze and bling – a land of non-stop catfights, Ferraris and feuds, ripped young footballers and a soulless preoccupation with fashion, cash and Instagram.
It says a great deal that, last month, Cheshire police had to crack down on the growing epidemic of high-powered car races plaguing the once-smart streets of Alderley Edge.
Alderley Edge is little more than a village, but it had its own upmarket night club, Brasingamens, which boasted not only Beckham, but Cristiano Ronaldo and singer/songwriter Pharrell Williams as regulars
Estelle Manor has 108 hotel rooms, four restaurants, a workspace, a gym with a class studio and padel tennis courts
Timothee Chalamet donning a classic ‘Gorpcore’ look with a trucker cap, Arc’Teryx jacket, baggy trousers and trainers
I’m glad that I took the decision to move to the Cotswolds and I’m sure the Beckhams feel the same. There’s no shortage of wealth or celebrity here but life is altogether different – worlds apart from the Cheshire commuter belt.
True, people may complain that there are a few too many SUVs ploughing through the narrow lanes. But, like the people, the fashion here is understated. Subtlety counts. It’s about family, not fortune. There are no nightclubs, just good pubs with good food.
So, what do we make of The Mail on Sunday’s revelation that a new reality TV series – likely to be called something along the lines of ‘Ladies of the Cotswolds’ – is heading to a village somewhere close to where I’m sitting now?
Not much, to judge from the reaction.
The series producers are said to be promising that they won’t be intrusive. That their show will be nothing like the Cheshire reality TV series. In which case, we’re bound to wonder, how on earth will it pull in the viewing masses?
How will it ever get off the ground, in fact, when so many doors are reportedly slamming shut?
It has been reported that a number of leading venues are refusing to allow film crews on their premises, including one of best hotels in the country, Estelle Manor, near Witney.
Phil Wisner, a close friend of Princess Beatrice, who owns the Bull at Charlbury – where I enjoyed lunch on Saturday – has also turned them down, according to The MoS.
Besides, we already have a successful TV series of our own down here: it’s called Clarkson’s Farm.
Life in the Cotswolds is rural not urban, a place of hard work and mud as well as honey-coloured manor houses and picturesque cottages.
It’s a place where, for the most part, the celebs and the locals rub along together just fine.
We’ll leave trashy reality TV to Cheshire, thank you. Round here, we prefer our reality to be real.
