The first item in the new exhibition at Chatsworth House celebrating the legacy of the late Duchess of Devonshire is a tweed suit. The youngest Mitford sister was a chicken lover and the bottom few inches – poultry head-height – have been intentionally dishevelled as if ravaged by her Buff Cochins and Welsummers.
The exhibition is an imagined conversation between Deborah Cavendish and the British-Turkish designer Erdem Moralıoğlu, whose last spring/summer show was a love letter to “Debo”, her wardrobe and the estate in Derbyshire of which she was chatelaine until her death, aged 94, in 2014. Items from her wardrobe punctuate Moralıoğlu’s designs inspired by them – the tweed suit is the latter.
