By Beth Davis

The countryside often crops up as a point of reference for the summer collections, and understandably, as it lends itself nicely to sunny ideals of fair-haired and freckled sweet peas in dresses and no shoes.
 
But come the colder months something more substantial is called for, and the same association, having only recently put you in mind of scones and tombolas, instead leaves you with fingers slightly numbed and a longing for suede boots the colour of damson jam.
 
Take a walk in the country as the seasons change, and everything gives itself over to autumnal mood boards- low skies across vast fields, and horizons laced with branches. Doors that are heavy with rusted locks and roads that wind on with nothing ahead and everything behind, everything hardened and beautiful.
 
And so in response, there are leathers like fallen leaves and camel-coat wraps. Enormous tweedy overcoats, rough haired and blanket-like. Mustard velvets that are dusty and worn and boiled wool skirts in deep pheasanty browns and shades of green as close to that of a welly boot than anything else.
 
Falling somewhere between fantasy and functionality, the catwalk held a view of a countryside that we all like to romanticise and entertain, one of boxy towns and villages with names such as Mulbarton and Lavenham which sound like they should smell. It is the countryside of a Tim Walker photograph, where hunting trophies are draped with pearls and knitted cars break down on winding lane, and a place of mild eccentricity, like a bias-cut silk that smells faintly of Bassett hound and still harbours a pair of jodhpurs beneath its folds.
 
This may seem like escapist woolgathering, lacking in the real practicalities of a muddy undergrowth, but this has never been fashions main concern. Despite taking its cue from seasonable necessities, it has more about interpretation, and in the face of the rain-lashed days and biting winds we must endure, giving some small pleasure in it’s theatricalities.
 
So although chestnut Prada waders and patent riding boots would, in reality, prove to be almost entirely useless for clambering over stiles, the point is that they would look wonderful doing it.