This weekend sees the fabulous fancy-dressed Bestival tying up the festival season, before London Fashion Week rolls into town. t5m compares festival chic to the runways. Roll up your roll mat and roll on fashion week.     

The sun may have set on festival season for another year, but while last weekend saw the End of the Road Festival play out in its typically grass roots style, it also heralded the start of another season; that of Spring/Summer 09. 

It must have been an almost seamless transition for some, those diehard trendsetters for whom life, with its myriad festivals and fashion shows, is just one big catwalk. 

Style.com, the trend website whose usual stake-out is the front line of fashion shows worldwide, employed the talents of fashion photographer Alistair Guy this year to shoot ‘street’ style at Glastonbury. “Festival goers are a lot more stylish than they used to be, due to the popularity of music festivals now,” he points out. “There are over fifty just in the UK! Topshop, for example, even produce Wellington boots in the summertime- they obviously sell a lot of pairs to do that.”

And, during the festival, Guy set about unearthing a bounty of boys and girls in their Barbour jackets and vintage Levi’s plaid shirts; in their short shorts contrived from old jeans; in their face-eclipsing Ray Bans and their ubiquitous Hunter boots.

But festivals haven’t always been so neurotically style conscious. Once the reserve of crusties and ardent, alternative music fans, they have slowly bubbled up into the mainstream and into the psyches of the whole nation- including those who, a few years ago, would never have deigned to set so much as a designer clad toe in a muddy field. 

The crop of smaller, more intimate ‘boutique’ festivals that have sprung up over the last few years- such as Latitude, Bestival and the Secret Garden Party- have surely helped to bridge the gap between catwalk and cowpat, with some even adopting fancy dress themes. It doesn’t really sound a whole world away from London Fashion Week. 

 

 

Imogen Eveson

 

 

Images from Alistair Guy – www.style.com