The countryside has turned its back on Hunter wellies – here’s what they’re wearing instead

For the 210,000 people who are expected to attend, the fact that Glastonbury is to be bathed in sunshine this weekend is excellent news. Unfortunately, it is not such good news for Hunter. In a cruel twist of fate, the wellington brand that has become synonymous with the world’s most famous music festival has gone into administration, less than 48 hours before the event is due to kick off. What does the royal warrant-holding, Edinburgh-based boot company blame for its troubles? The weather. Specifically, a lack of rain.

Apparently, three years of below-average rainfall has affected sales to such an extent that the company, which was founded in 1856, currently has debts of £100 million, including £11.5 million owed to UK trade creditors. It’s a damp squib for a brand that for decades has enjoyed such a high profile. Hunter was a favourite of Princess Diana, as well as festival stalwarts Kate Moss, Alexa Chung, Jo Whiley and Stella McCartney, whose husband Alasdhair Willis served as the brand’s creative director between 2013 and 2020.  

As well as the weather being an issue for Hunter, the brand may have also seen sales dry up because of fierce competition across the market. Around the country, people feel strongly about their wellie brand of choice – nothing marks you out more vehemently as a townie than wearing the wrong wellies, a sin almost as ignominious as owning a second home. 

I own three pairs of Hunters – a tall red pair, a tall black pair and a short green pair. You might have thought that a five-year-old pair of red Hunter wellies, well past the first shiny flush of youth, would be a fairly inoffensive choice of footwear for a weekend on a farm. You’d be wrong. “Hunters,” snorted my brother-in-law, a dairy farmer in the East Riding of Yorkshire. 

Nobody wears Hunters in the East Riding of Yorkshire. They’re deemed too flash, too pricey and too townie. Hunters, apparently, are a London wellie, for rich, profligate, dilettante Londoners – the sort of fools who reach for the rubber at the merest spot of rain. I thought guiltily of all the women in my local park, parading in their £115 navy, pink or silver Hunters if so much as a puddle had formed on the ground. 

For city folk, wellies will always feel like costume, a brief interlude of novelty to be shucked on during showers. Like Dry Robes and Barbour jackets, their functionality far exceeds the requirements of the task in hand, which is generally to walk the dog, on barely damp terrain. When the Duchess of Edinburgh was photographed last year wearing cream trousers and immaculate green Ariat wellingtons to visit a farm in Devon, one could put her pristine appearance down to the fact that she was carrying out her royal duties. Turn up in the country wearing anything as crisp and clean, and you will likely be an object of derision. 

Clearly, a farmer requires far more from his wellies than whether they look jolly on Instagram. As for the idea that Hunters are fashionable – think of all the spotless pairs that would once make their debut on Glastonbury attendees – nothing would put them off more. While city types might fetishise “country” fashion, or at least, their sanitised imaginings of it, country types hold “city” fashion in low esteem. Of equal derision are the city types who come up to hunt, shoot and fish at weekends, their gleaming Muck boots (Joules for their wives) marking them out as outsiders.

As for the sort of wellies farmers favour, well, it rather depends on where they live. In Fife, Dunlops are popular, largely because the factory used to be in Dunfermline. My brother-in-law wears black Dunlops, a snip at £29 from Sokells of Driffield. Also popular among the farm holdings of Yorkshire is Dunlop’s Purofort Professional (£64), an all-terrain boot which offers thermal insulation to -20C. 

In Berkshire, farmers prefer Le Chameau, the French brand favoured by the Princess of Wales. Neoprene-lined and with a side fastening to allow for chunkier calves, the all-terrain Vierzonord is the ultimate green welly, whose durability justifies its hefty £200 price tag. In the Cotswolds, meanwhile, a battered brown Dubarry is the boot of choice. Most popular is the Galway, whose leather upper is lined with a water resistant finish. “Indestructible,” according to the sheep farmer father of a friend. At £379, you’d hope they’d shear the sheep as well.

Although even Dubarrys seem affordable when compared to the ludicrously priced designer wellies currently being snapped up by townies, which the farming community would dismiss as having more money than sense. Search “wellies” on Net-a-Porter and nothing comes up. Search up “rain boots’’, on the other hand, and you’ll find Burberry’s £590 checked canvas and rubber rain boots, Moncler’s £415 rain boot (complete with two-inch heel) and a £1,355 pair of Loro Piana “Regent” rain boots that even Putin might reject as being outré. 

But in the fast-moving world of wellie semantics, don’t imagine trends are confined solely to the city. Thanks to farming having become more mechanised, lighter ankle-length boots by Stanley or De Walt are increasingly replacing knee-high Dunlops or Argylls. When it comes to discussing the merits of different wellies on farming forums, tensions run high. “I typically stand the majority of a 12-hour day milking etc, and these are great,” says Bob O, a farmer from Kinross, of his beloved Aigle Parcours. “Took them on a 10 mile per day pheasant hunting walk and my feet didn’t hurt at all.” 

Dudders, an arable farmer from East Sussex, swears by Bekina. “No splits after a year, but make sure you order a country tread, not a townie tread. And never squat down in them. It makes the rubber buckle up on the sides and stretch the sole.” 

Farmers’ wives, on the other hand, have different criteria when it comes to shopping for their wellies. By what strange alchemy they seem, almost as one, to gravitate towards brightly coloured and patterned novelty wellies – often featuring dogs – it is impossible to know. Maybe it’s a cheery counterpoint to all the earthy tones their partners tend to wear when working the land. My mother-in-law is wedded to her pink and blue polka dot ones (“they cheer me up,” she says) while a colleague’s sister-in-law favours wellies in a repeat dachshund pattern by Joules. Another friend’s mother, a farmer’s wife from Lincolnshire, is fond of a leopard-print pair, bought from Asda. 

While farmers might not mourn Hunter’s demise, many others will. Hunters weren’t quite as synonymous with Glastonbury as the Pyramid Stage, but they were still a mighty presence, as woven into the fabric of the event as bucket hats and rucksacks. 

But the gig isn’t over yet. The brand has already been sold to US company Authentic, owner of Ted Baker and Reebok. Which sounds like an ideally deep-pocketed owner to give the brand some wellie.