Curating a festival for four decades of British cool, in the open air, is a risky business, especially if it is not music focused and aims at family appeal. Situated on the edge of the South Downs, normally used for hosting horse racing, the venue rolled out an easy charm; a mix made for designers, music lovers and nostalgia seekers; many dressed up in clothes older visitors had in their attics and younger ones bought in charity shops, market stalls or village fetes.

My family spent a day hanging out, dilettantely poking around stalls, meeting friends, while the music wafted across from the perimeter grandstands, walking down the movie-set, instant-retro main street and stopping at victualling spots.  Bars offering Festival of Britain food and drink, Abbey Road studios music snapshots rubbed shoulders with stores like Cath Kidson, with her fifties style household products. Star of India providing curry takeaways faster than you can pay for them, Fortnum & Mason serving out high-class teas with tables set looking at the Leisure Dome and the Veuve Clicquot champagne garden providing ample opportunity for people watching.

The vintage cars made for a great entrée, including the cars that never went mass market, like the Frisky. Caravan culture made its presence felt with making do, camping for the liberated post war working classes a reminder of popular cultures contribution to British cool, and British fashion’s street credentials. As we ambled around ephemera from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, I speculated that once something becomes cool it has reached a tipping point. Many years later it’s recycled and an era is recalled as part of its memory. Is that where nostalgia creeps in? Things make a much more immediate impact on us than political or social stories because we can touch them. Clothes, motor scooters and vases that evoke personal memories  become time markers.

Vintage Goodwood reminded me of how much popular culture has contributed to the rich diversity of design we have in this country; of how the visual world is really a kind of language, of how its makes us feel inclusive and its part in our national identity. It welds us into a broader family of American & European culture that I remain grateful to be a part of.

A big thanks to Wayne and the Hemingway family.  I hope you stage it again. There is lots more gold to mine along this yellow brick road.