Dressed to kill?

This was the day George Osborne and friends gathered for the Bullingdon Club shooting match. Simon Mills deconstructs the Oxford look
Bullingdon hunting - for use g2 30.10.2008 piece only View larger picture

1. The Hon Luke Bridgeman

The year is 1992. The Shamen's Ebeneezer Goode is topping the charts. Stereo MC's Connected isn't far behind. Britain's youth is togged up in ludicrously baggy, post-rave clobber - flared jeans, long T-shirts and bush hats. All except this chap, the heroically benign Hon Luke Bridgeman, who clearly didn't get the memo from Madchester. How old is he? Who knows? Sloanes tend to "go old" early on in life and stay in floppy, middle-aged limbo until they die. His fresh face and mummy's boy haircut suggest that he is yet to graduate, but his clothes speak of imminent retirement. Limp Barbour jacket, torn from under parents' dozing labrador worn, à la Peter Sallis, with a tweedy tie and a Tattershall check shirt. No man holding a gun has ever looked less threatening.

2. Nat Rothschild

There is something magnificently, unknowingly hip-hop about the way Nat Rothschild has got the top of one of his wellies rolled down. It brings to mind the way that southern-fried rapper Nelly used to roll up one trouser leg. Otherwise ... oh dear. As any stylist knows, layering is always a strong look, but an overlong padded gilet on top of a chunky-knit sweater only works if you are Ted Moult testing the double-glazing in some ghastly country pub. Heir to a £750m fortune, but he certainly wasn't squandering the family money on clothes.

3. Ifty Riaz

This one is really letting the scruffy side down with his sweetly inappropriate gear. You can image the joshing hilarity that ensued when the clueless chap (whose name, by the way, is an anagram of "I iz farty") turned up in his blazer, club tie and suede chukka boots, can't you? "Ifty, you fucking dolt! This is the glorious 12th not bloody Henley!" The truth is, shooting is a simple pastime invented for Hooray Henrys who can't play rugby. Shotguns scatter their lead far and wide while the birds are generally fat and slow-flying. You'd have to be a complete doofus not to be able to bag one. Ergo; there's no real need for specialist gear - as long as you are warm, have one good eye and don't have the DTs, you could go shooting in sandals, a fez and a fleecy dressing gown and still be the best gun. So, I'm guessing from his drippy, Merchant Ivory get-up that dear old "I iz farty" was the most eagle-eyed crack shot of the bunch.

4. George Latham

Foggy to Hon Luke Bridgeman's Cleggy, ex-infantry officer George Latham's lack of vanity and keen pursuit of anti-fashion borders on the perverse. His ensemble incorporates a baffling example of the entirely nonsensical, tie-worn-under-crew-neck-jumper thing while the slightly disturbing centre-parting has one wondering if Georgie boy went into the barbers and asked for "a Steve Lamacq".

5. Baron Lupus Von Maltzhan

This bounder has the brass-necked temerity to be not only German, but also to be wearing a poncy, stone-coloured jacket and have his hair styled like some bloody soccer player. He won't have been invited back.

6. Lord Alexander Hope

The upper middle classes are nothing but resourceful. They were into recycling long ago. Especially where their clothes were concerned. Look at Lord Alexander Hope's gear. Probably bequeathed to him by his father, it's crushingly dull but adaptable and socially acceptable. As it says in The Sloane Ranger Handbook, "In a sense all shooters are Sloanes because the clothes are standard, the rules are rigid, the ritual perfected for the deference of men against birds." It's pulling birds where young Alexander might have a problem ...

7. George Osborne

Respect to George's rather fantastic barnet. It would be too easy and cliched to dismiss it as pre-Four Weddings Hughie Grant because I think he could just as easily be one of Haircut 100. His gear is not too shabby either: girly, over-snug plus-fours, namby-pamby hosiery (those socks are not nearly thick enough to be properly thorn-proof Sloane), but a nice tweedy jacket (very Andre 3000's Benjamin Bixby line) and a well thought-out, tone-on-tone shirt/tie/V-neck combo. Osborne is the best-dressed twerp here.

8. Anon

Hello. I am the unidentified Harry Enfield lookalike who turned up wearing embarassingly unsuitable gear off the Gap sale rail. I am terrified Nat and his chums are going to get drunk, forcibly remove my pleat-top chinos and put bootpolish on my testicles. Again.

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The Bullingdon Club

The Bullingdon Club pictured at a shooting match