An ode to Boden

Way back in the noughties, Charles Moore observed that the Conservatives could learn a lot from the Boden story. ‘An individualistic, non-hierarchical, girly, aspirational, southern, 40 per cent internet-based, middle-class business, laid back but hard-headed. Yet, at the same time, it is quite traditional […] the way of life he is promoting is instinctively conservative’, Moore concluded. Of course, this was back in Boden’s heyday, when the mail-order catalogue company routinely posted an increase in sales year upon year, back when David Cameron was spotted wearing its floral boardshorts on holiday in 2008, and when the company was synonymous with the middle-class good times: drinks at the yacht club on the Isle of Wight, Sunday lunch in Oxfordshire, Christmas parties in the side-return empires of Wandsworth. Founded in 1991 with an inheritance from a childless uncle, Boden soon became a middle-class juggernaut, expanding into the US, France and Germany, all without a single physical shop to its name.

Looking at Johnnie Boden – or Bodger as he is known to his chums – standing in his hot pink linen suit and extraordinary square glasses to collect his CBE at Buckingham Palace last year, it is hard to imagine anybody asking to emulate him. After a series of disastrous wrong moves where the company lost its way (to the tune of £4.4 million) and forgot its base, Johnnie Boden is more likely to appear in a broadsheet features supplement saying sorry in middle-class code – ‘I “effed up”’ or ‘I’m a nitwit’ – for his crimes against Boden Man and Woman. These crimes were severe indeed. By his own admission, Boden became ‘too trendy’ and forgot that Boden Woman only wants to wear something that flatters her waist after three C-sections and makes her feel slightly jazzy on the school run; something in a bright colour with a white frilly collar bolted on top. Boden Man, now being phased out of the offer altogether, certainly didn’t want to wear skinny jeans or trainers, or, heaven forfend, a leather jacket. All he wanted was a blue linen shirt and some swimming trunks that could pass muster in Bembridge or Brancaster without having to pay through the nose for Vilebrequins.

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But although Johnnie Boden may have lost market share, the look he has created is, in my opinion, untouchable, proving that the old-Etonian rag man will always speak to us. Sales figures may rise and fall, but my daughter has received Boden clothes for her birthday every year since she was born, the green and white parcel arriving reassuringly on time with a polite note inside. I can’t speak for Boden Man, but my own wardrobe contains an embarrassing amount of Boden: Breton t-shirts I seem to pair with almost everything, print dresses that I dig out for various christenings and drinks parties with the neighbours, trousers that I can wear on the dog walk and then ‘transition’ into evening. At one point, I even owned a pair of Boden leopard-print stilettos that prompted one male acquaintance to remark that I had all the look of Tory high office, à la Theresa May. Fashion, this is not. Rather, it is sartorial shorthand for a certain way of life, under threat but still jaunty, a bit like Akshata Murty during her Downing Street tenure.

Asked why he didn’t wear tails to Buckingham Palace to collect his CBE, Boden declared that having worn the gear for five years at Eton, ‘he felt it was a backward step’. The pink suit was donned, apparently, in response to a bet from a friend. Some friend. But in reminding us that he could have dug out his school tails in the first place, Boden proves that he’s back talking to the people who want to hear from him, his base proper. Like all good old-Etonians in the public eye – David Cameron, Boris Johnson et al – Boden bides his time, safe in the knowledge that a comeback is never far off. What could the all-but decimated Conservative party learn from Bodger these days? Apologise profusely, get back to basics and make sure you know who it is you’re speaking to. Pink linen suit and square clown glasses optional.