How a new life in rural Scotland called for an entirely new wardrobe – and not necessarily the tweed items this writer was expecting.

As I write, there’s frost on the ground outside, and I can see our cattle out in the field behind the house. Four years ago, I moved from a comfortable desk job in the MR PORTER office in London, and a great view of Shepherd’s Bush roundabout, to a farm in rural Scotland. I used to joke that my motivation for doing so was to be able to wear more tweed, but in reality life is far too muddy, wet and cold for any such sartorial affectation. In my imagination, I thought I’d be dressing each morning in a tweed jacket, button-down shirt, madder silk tie, grey flannel trousers and brown suede shoes. In reality this works well when I’m attending the children’s carol service, or my annual meeting at the accountant’s office, but to my enduring delight, things are far too real on the farm to go about in such garb on a daily basis.

In style terms, rural life means that clothes basically can’t be too heavy, too warm or too rugged. London is hardly blessed by its climate, but what passes there for winter-weight wool socks are summer-weight in Scotland. It’s no joke to say that you can tell it’s summer here because people switch to wearing lightweight sweaters, while in winter plenty of people wear goose-down coats to keep warm. Nothing odd about that you might say, but here they wear them inside their house.

All of which brings me to my red and black Filson Mackinaw coat, one of the few garments that retained its relevance when we moved. I bought it while we lived in London, when life in the country was a pipe dream, and I still remember how hot I got just trying it on in the shop. In town, its toasty 24oz virgin wool fabric meant I only wore it in the depths of winter, when I took the dog out on a particularly cold night. These days, it’s a mid-weight piece, something to wear over a shirt on an autumn walk. It’s cut too slim to fit over my thick William Lockie cardigans, and it’s not warm enough for serious winter weather. It works best as an overshirt when I’m in the farm office or while I’m chopping wood. It’s a garment so robust that it took two years of regular use just to knock the creases out of the sleeves, and as it enters its sixth winter, it shows no signs of wear.

The big picture is that my Filson coat made me realise that while country life does demand that a man take a new style direction, that direction needn’t be the baggy cords, V-neck sweaters and fleece gilets so popular among the British farming fraternity. Inspired in equal parts by the reality of my country life, Filson’s Instagram feed and a couple of holidays on a dude ranch in Montana I’ve developed a real affection for the American take on cattle-farming (or ranching), in the form of high-waisted jeans, Western-style denim shirts, hunting jackets and Stetson hats. I wear Red Wing Shoes-style boots on a daily basis in summer, and swap them out for leather hiking boots in winter. A pair of cowboy boots seems like the logical next step. That red and black jacket really has a lot to answer for.