Author: Nargess Banks
At the Goodwood Revival everyone dresses the part, though the real skill lies in looking as if you haven’t tried at all, while behind the scenes the costumiers spend the small hours steaming and ironing and mending decades-old silk back to life, from the Norse end of days to la dolce vita.
A woman in a silk headscarf and cat-eye shades leans against a low-slung racing car, a man in a linen suit and two-tone brogues at her side. Around them lots of tweed and tea dresses, grease-stained overalls, RAF blue and red lipstick. For one weekend each September, the Goodwood Revival asks its guests to come in costume. And they happily oblige.
Goodwood is the family seat of the Dukes of Richmond, and its circuit runs through the family story. The current Duke’s grandfather, Freddie March, opened it just after the war to become one of the country’s great tracks. The family ended the racing in the mid-sixties, once the cars had outpaced it, and the circuit fell silent for decades, until Charles Gordon-Lennox, the 11th Duke and then the Earl of March, brought the roar of engines back, first with the Festival of Speed and then with the Revival. It recreates the years the circuit once raced, from 1948 to 1966, the golden age of motor sport. The premise was and remains strict: if it did not exist between those years, it does not belong here.
Revival is as much about the cloth as the metal, with each year’s theme guiding the look. This season the event gave itself over to “La Dolce Vita”, the sweet life, that mid-century Italian romance that also marks landmark anniversaries for Maserati and Vespa. It is the Rome of Fellini and of Roman Holiday, Marcello Mastroianni behind dark glasses, Sophia Loren sweeping past a pavement café, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck tearing through the city on a Vespa. Above all it is sprezzatura, that very Italian art of looking immaculate without appearing to have tried at all.
Which is where the real work begins. Behind every entrance that looks unstudied is someone, or more likely a professional team, who has spent the small hours coaxing and steaming decades-old silk back into shape, deciding what a look needs and what it can survive, and getting a delicate, temperamental garment race-ready without harming a thread. One of them is the costumier Mark Andrew Kelly, in charge of dressing Jaguar Land Rover’s special guests across the weekend, for the Revival and the Saturday night Ball, which runs to a theme of its own.
Every look begins on a mood board. “You have these photo albums stored in your brain that you pull references from as creatives,” he explains as we meet the day before the Ball. He is speaking of a lifetime of watching old movies and following fashion and couture collections. “They come to you when you need them. I call it my third eye.”
Kelly admits finding the mid-century hugely inspirational. “Fashion exploded. There was so much going on.” There was, of course, the pivotal 1947 Dior New Look that lifted fashion from the austere aesthetic of the war years. Then came Coco Chanel’s reinvention of the collarless tweed suit, Balenciaga’s sculptural sixties and the Jackie Kennedy look. Kelly revisited period films to see how such clothes behaved in motion. Alan Parker’s 1996 Evita proved instrumental. “I looked back at the behind-the-scenes stills of Madonna, of images of her laughing, telling jokes, drinking from a glass. You understand that’s how the clothes move.”
Kelly then began looking through the Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn archives, at the full skirts and elegant pencil dresses with thick belts and scooped necklines, bracelet gloves, cocoon-shaped opera coats, and small skull-cap hats. For visual harmony, he rewatched Todd Haynes’s 2015 Carol with Cate Blanchett in the leading role, where something red appears in her every frame. “As a stylist that really resonates, because I love cohesion, that thread that brings you through.”
The next stage involved sourcing the outfits, and for that Kelly worked with Angels, the venerable London costumier. He says their vast warehouse is a magical place, and an education in fashion history. “You learn things like the belts were never more than two inches, and the buckles were leather-covered, because metal was in short supply during the war. The gloves, the shoes and the handbag always matched. You couldn’t have a white glove and a brown shoe. It’s fascinating.” He is open to refining the look, but insists, where possible, on the historic accuracy of accessories.
“I love an element of inspiration, a flash on the day,” he says. Kelly has worked with some of the top fashion houses, including Céline. “When you do a fashion show, everything is pre-styled. With editorial it isn’t, and it is fun to bring that in.” The Saturday night Ball this year ran to the theme of “Ragnarok”, the Norse end of days, the invitation instructing guests to “clad thy body for whatever the Gods decree.” So, for the modern Viking women who wanted to keep their heels, he took current knee-high boots and sheathed them in gaiters, medieval from the ankle up.
Kelly and his team had fitted the guests prior to the Ball and Revival, the costumes mended and ironed and steamed ahead of the weekend. “My tailor goes through it all with me and I’ll flag everything that needs doing. We then steam the garments she’s worked on.” His tools of the trade are an iron and two steamers, one professional, one hand-held.
Decades-old cloth is temperamental, and something always gives, a hem, a button, a belt with no hole where you need one. It is on the Saturday, as the guests dress for the Ball, that the work turns frantic, the team pinning, mending and steaming in the rooms behind. “Last minute, you could be punching a hole in a belt. Something always goes wrong,” he laughs. “Be as prepared as you can, but also quick on your feet.” The Ball goes on into the small hours, and by the next morning the team is up again, on hand through Sunday, swapping a blouse, settling accessories, dressing guests into looks that must seem to have cost no effort at all. And all for the romance of the golden age of the motor car.
Goodwood Revival, Goodwood Motor Circuit, West Sussex, UK, from 18 to 20 September 2026
Photography: (top left) stylist Orlaith Melia and JLR guests dressed by costumier Mark Andrew Kelly for 2026 Revival; (top right) Stanley Tucci at 2022 Revival; (fourth row) Melia and Natalie Salmon, co-founder The Modems; (all others) guests at Revival. JLR Photography ©This is Timothy; all others ©Charlie Brenninkmeijer, Jonathan James Wilson, Cat Brant and Jayson Fong for Goodwood Revival