Sloane Ranger

In 1979, the magazine Harpers & Queen coined the term to define its targeted readers: well-to-do, upper middle-class or even aristocrats that chose to live in the area around Sloane Street and Sloane Square at the start of the Kings Road in London. The female Sloane Ranger — wearing a Laura Ashley blouse, a pleated skirt, flat shoes and a pearl necklace — was epitomized by Lady Diana Spencer, who later married Charles, Prince of Wales. The men opt for tweed blazers, Shetland pullovers, green Wellington boots, and the ubiquitous Husky. Who was their icon? The young Prince Andrew before he married Fergie. The Sloane Rangers represented the respectable — but not necessarily less aggressive — alternative to London’s punk rockers, who were unashamedly ugly, dirty, and bad. Sloanes, by contrast, were young, rich, and sensible, and typically worked as landscape architects, financial brokers, lawyers, or in PR. Could they make a comeback? Yes, would seem to be the answer according to London’s Daily Telegraph, the most right-wing of the English broadsheets. At the most recent Countryside Alliance march in London (Sloane Rangers like the countryside), there were whole armies of young people wearing Gucci moccasins who had never seen a clod of earth in their life.