Caroline Smiley and Sarah Corbett-Winder: ‘We’re bananas for the Cotswolds look’

Sarah Corbett-Winder is regaling me with the origin story of her banana phone. “Everyone else on social media was using a microphone and I wanted my own unique thing,” says the 39-year-old stylist, content creator and fashion entrepreneur of her cartoonish prop. She is sitting beside her mother, Caroline Smiley, at the family home in Wiltshire, a small, dappled dachshund circling their feet. “It’s also a useful tool because I can pretend people are calling in with a style question, like a hotline.”

“Whenever I see Sarah’s Instagram I think, well! Every penny that we’ve spent on speech and drama has paid off,” Smiley claps back.

The mother and daughter are chatting in the duck-egg-blue striped kitchen of Smiley’s home, where Corbett-Winder grew up with her older sister. It’s a quintessentially English farmhouse set on 99 acres of land, and surrounded by roaming fallow deer and neatly clipped topiary. The decor is an exemplar of the Cotswolds brand of vintage maximalism that has become so highly sought after in recent years. There are tassel-fringed curtains and skirted armchairs in chintzy patterns, a downstairs loo plastered in wallpaper depicting the Battle of Valmy and adorned with whimsical Victorian shadowboxes, and tables and surfaces strewn with a menagerie of antique Staffordshire dog figurines, family photos and half-finished puzzles.

It really makes me upset that lots of women fear getting dressed

The banana phone – a recurring motif in the Instagram posts Corbett-Winder shares with her 300k-plus followers – is typical of her humorous feed, where she might be seen strutting through a car park in a frothy Carrie Bradshaw-type princess dress, or shopping in the supermarket wearing a spangly jumpsuit and towering platform heels, her three small children in tow. “I see putting an outfit together like creating art,” says Corbett-Winder. Today, she is dressed in a chocolate and white striped shirt from With Nothing Underneath and a sugared almond-blue suit from her own brand, a pair of trademark oversized sunglasses perched high on her nose. “It really makes me upset that lots of women fear getting dressed,” she says. “For me, it’s the best part of the day!”

Corbett-Winder began her career working as a fashion editor at Russian Vogue, before becoming Boden’s head creative and in-house stylist. While at the British retailer beloved of the Home Counties set, she introduced the white trainer and helped the brand “become less mumsy”. “Looking back, I learnt so much of my craft and skills in personal styling and the psychology of getting dressed there,” she says. Though she traces her early passion for clothes and styling to her “dandy” grandmother and Smiley. “She’d always be in a very handsome blazer,” Corbett-Winder recalls. “And you always had an amazing outfit on,” she says to her mother, “even if you were just going to the supermarket.”

“I do not own a tracksuit,” replies Smiley, who is dressed in a smart navy and green three-piece tartan suit and sky-blue shirt. “I wouldn’t even let them in the house. I’ve always put a lot of thought into my clothes, but once I’ve got them on, I don’t want to pull or tug – I want to be able to go and do whatever I’m doing that day, feeling comfortable and nice.”

That same ethos sums up Moloh (named to rhyme with the family’s late chocolate Labrador, Rolo), the womenswear brand Smiley founded in 2003 with a collection of brightly coloured overalls. “It started because I had horses and I’d come home from dropping off the girls at school, dressed like this, and I couldn’t be fagged to take my clothes off,” she explains.

Since then the label, which Smiley runs with her business partner Butts Dancer, has evolved to encompass a range of British heritage-inspired staples, from brass-buttoned waistcoats (£375) to the signature military-style jackets and “slightly theatrical” tailcoats worn by the Princess of Wales and presenter Nicki Chapman. Everything is made across factories in England and Scotland in limited quantities of 30 to 40 pieces, so “once it’s gone, it’s gone”, says Smiley, who repurposes any surplus fabric and buttons into limited-edition patchwork jackets and waistcoats. “We’re very much about buy better and wear it out, never save it for best,” she says. “People say to me, ‘God I absolutely love that, but when would I wear it?’ And I go, ‘Well, be the chicest woman walking the dog!’”

The shop in Tetbury, directly below Moloh’s design studio, is at the heart of the Cotswolds community. “We actually couldn’t survive without the shop,” says Smiley. “It’s all a bit eccentric and bonkers,” adds Corbett-Winder. “But it’s a real community – she’s even called ‘Mrs Moloh’ in Tetbury.” Smiley nods. “There’s a bit of a joke that the two carrier bags you see in Tetbury are Highgrove [the gardens and estate shop belonging to King Charles III and Queen Camilla] and Moloh,” she says. “It’s quite fab – I’m very happy to be seen with the King!”

Corbett-Winder is now part of the family business, having been brought on to style the brand’s lookbooks a few years ago. How do the pair work together? “There’s a very good level of respect and trust,” says Corbett-Winder.

“I think you’ve made me more adventurous, and you’ve taught me to let go, because I can be a bit stubborn,” says Smiley. Though they admit it’s a balancing act. “Sometimes Sarah might try something, and I’ll say, ‘That’s really cool, but our core customers won’t get it,’” says Smiley. “Our returning customer rate is about 68 per cent so once we’ve got them, we want to keep them.” “And then I’ll add a Chanel-style ballet flat,” concedes Corbett-Winder. “But I think we both know what the end goal is, which is to be a bit cool, but not lose your current customer.”

Smiley, in turn, is passing down her experience to Kipper, the women’s tailoring brand Corbett-Winder founded two years ago. Featuring playful off-the-peg styles such as an apple-green Liberty floral-print suit (£605) and a punchy banana-print blue blazer (£375), Kipper’s “cheeky” suits are made by the same pattern cutter and factory as Moloh’s. “It’s really nice, it’s not competitive at all,” says Corbett-Winder of their working relationship. “We probably have similar customers but you’re doing it your way and I’m doing it mine.”

Corbett-Winder is working on new uniforms for the Rosewood hotel in London, which she hopes will become a growing part of the business, in addition to the ready-to-wear. “I think my dream would be to own that affordable suiting slot on the market,” she says. She has also inherited Smiley’s magpie eye for maximalist interiors (her sister, Charlotte Smiley, also works as an interior designer), having recently decamped from north-west London to a Georgian house in rural Wales. Like the family home, that house is also filled with eccentric furnishings and dog ceramics. “Sarah’s is even more bonkers,” says Smiley of her daughter’s penchant for bold colour blocking and loud, clashing prints. “I’ve learnt from you to be confident in my own taste,” smiles Corbett-Winder.

What’s a family dinner party at the Smiley household like? “It’s fun,” she says. “Everyone mucks in. The grandchildren love laying the table. I mean, you might get the knife on the left and the fork on the right and the napkin in the middle, but it doesn’t matter.”

“It’s just like our brands,” says Corbett-Winder. “There are no rules: it’s carefree.”