Vintage at Goodwood is to lovers of true vintage a bit like what the Millennium Dome in Greenwich was to London - the Emperor's New Clothes. As with the Dome the organisers PR-puffed their way through months of New Labour spin before opening it to the public without really thinking about what should go inside the Dome, with the result that the contents ended up looking like an afterthought, a hotch-potch of jumbled, soulless, assorted features that didn't really work together.
Having worked in PR myself for ten years, I recognise the signs, when excessive spin is being pushed to the point where the signs of strain appear and the seams are stretched. The dangers of too much hype is that an event is almost certainly bound to fail expectations as a result. Yet many of us still flocked along to VAG like willing sheep, half-hoping that our Utopian vision of a vintage world in the woods would be satisfied. Of course, it would remain just that, a Utopian vision.
Yes, there were high points - namely the musical programming and in particular curating of the Leisure Dome by Mike Flowers. Well done Mike!
For me, the best bits were hanging out with my friends from the Mike Flowers Pops in the Leisure Dome, listening to the amazing Swingle Sisters and Tony Hatch's orchestra with guests while standing next to one of my heroes, Captain Sensible. And friends who were traders said they were blown away by pop artist Peter Blake attending their stall, that they made enough money to make the weekend worthwhile and that they had an amazing time slam-dancing and moshing along in the pit to The Damned on Sunday night (they still have the bruises).
I am not disputing the musical content, most of which was thoughtfully curated and great. It was more that the rest of the festival didn't really make sense as a concept.
The one overriding sense I left VAG with was that it was a pastiche and certainly nothing like the 'Festival of Britain' - whose spirit it claimed to be invoking. The Festival of Britain was about showcasing the best of British scientific invention, design and technological creation - none of which did we see at VAG - unless you discounted the gorgeous vintage cars on display and the opulent £12000 watches for sale.
It amazed me that so little thought had gone into the food and catering. People cannot live on cheese toasties alone y’know. And I’m sure that even in ‘vintage-land’ people didn’t just live on sandwiches either. If this festival was apeing the Festival of Britain then why didn’t it have any local British produce on display or for sale? And where were the lashings of organic ginger beer we heard about in Enid Blyton? They surely missed a trick there.
Wayne Hemingway, if you're listening, vintage is not about spending oodles of cash necessarily, it is more about finding a true bargain...and as a punter you'd be hard-pushed to get one at VAG, if you took into account the high entrance price, the exorbitant £12 hardback annual programme and the hidden extras you had to pay for shows on site. One gripe many people had was that they were charged extra to see some of the shows. To get in to see Kitten von Mew's burlesque show people were being charged an extra £35 a head at the Torch Club. Outrageous! When did you ever hear of being charged extra to see a certain band on a stage at Glastonbury? It seems that in his rush to make a profit Mr. Hemingway put the proverbial cart before the horse.
A few years ago I helped BBC London radio presenter Robert Elms put together a Listed Londoner interview for BBC1. Wayne Hemingway was one of the people we chose to interview about his favourite bit of London. He took us up the Wembley Canal and round the Indian market on the broadway there, telling us that this rundown but multi-ethnic place was his favourite bit of London. Well, if that's the case, then he seems to have forgotten his origins...Vintage Goodwood with that hideous fake high street, resembling the New Economic Foundation's Clone Town Britain report (in which NEF warns about every UK high street starting to look the same) was a fake showcase of mundaneity to appease the sponsors. To anyone who has watched the Wizard of Oz, this was a pre-fab cardboard Emerald City. I half expected to see a Tesco's there, or maybe a Barclays cashpoint. It looked a bit like any old town centre and could have been Basingstoke or Milton Keynes. And was this what I came all the way from London for? No, No and thrice no!
I grew up in nearby Hampshire for 20 yrs and during my childhood I visited places like the Watercress Line near Winchester many times which has more true vintage enthusiasts per sq foot than Vintage Goodwood could hope to sport in ten years. The old men running the steam railway are also mainly retired volunteers, who love their work with a passion and don't consider it to be work. They are also suited and booted, kitted out with authentic uniforms and they know their stuff and are happy to talk to you at length. I know that the world of vintage cars and car racing is just like that, having been to Silverstone race track with family friends who are collectors, engineers and who race their own cars there. You've never seen such a bunch of eccentric, English characters as you get at a vintage car rally. But sadly, none of these people appeared to be present at Vintage Goodwood, although the cars were there. It would have been great to have been able to talk to some vintage car enthusiasts about their vehicles. But maybe they too saw what the festival was about, delivered their vehicles to the site, and promptly ran for cover?
There was something a bit odd about the crowd of punters at Vintage Goodwood. Apart from the traders, who were evidently keen and experienced vintage experts, many of the people who attended VAG seemed to be in fancy dress rather than real vintage clothing. It's true I've also seen much better dressing at Bestival and Secret Garden Party. Wayne Hemingway wanted this event to ‘inject glamour’ into festival going in Britain…however, it seemed as though the majority of people had turned up in jeans or shorts and t-shirts, clearly not bothered about making an effort – leaving the rest of us who had, feeling vaguely embarrassed.
Arguably you would also see more of a social spread and a more fascinating bunch of people at a horse-racing meet at Goodwood's fine racetrack, or at Cowdray Park to watch the Polo near Petworth.
Can I suggest to people that - unless you are going just for the music - that instead of going to VAG next year and getting ripped off, they visit the nearby vintage and charity shops in Petworth and the Rogate car boot sale which is renowned for being a great place to find vintage treasure? It was on last Saturday, but I'm sure that no one at Vintage Goodwood knew about it.
My friend who is a costume designer found an amazing Welsh wool cape and matching skirt in a charity shop in Petworth on the way to the festival for a mere £30 – probably less than you’d pay for it on Ebay.
This is where the true meaning of vintage lies and will always lie for me, in scrabbling around in old shops and houses in places like Southsea, where you would go through the contents of some one’s front room to find a treasure or two or at the Salvation Army jumble sale in Petersfield where back in the eighties I found some antique leather belts with amazing buckles that I still wear today.
Vintage is not about spending hundreds of pounds to spend a themed pseudo-weekend in the country, based on an ‘idea’ of vintage rather than a reality.
