Long Afternoons at Polperro: The New Season

Polperro is where our long afternoons happen. Lunch on the deck that quietly becomes dinner. A glass at the bar while the light drops behind the gums. Friends who came for an hour and are still at the table at six. Sam and I planted the vines here long before there was a boutique, and the boutique, two minutes down the road and named for our daughters, is chosen for exactly this life.

This season Katherine spent a day with us there, moving from the gardens to the dining room to the bar as the afternoon went on. These are the pieces, in the places they belong.

Stripe in the gardens

The Vilagallo Irina jacket and Teodora pant are cut from the same wide blue and white stripe, and together they make a suit with a sense of humour. Four buttons sit at the front of the hip of the trouser, each a different colour: red, green, white and navy. It is a sailor's fastening, done in colour.

Vilagallo was founded in Spain in 1997 and designs between Madrid and Piacenza. Under the gums on a bright morning, the stripe reads as crisp as the light. Apart, the jacket goes over a white tee and denim and the trouser wants nothing more than a white tank.

Print on the garden path

Acler work from Adelaide and drape by hand before anything is cut. The Hodel top and Hodel skirt carry the same Wild Trace print, soft cream washed with plum and ochre, and on the gravel path between the clipped hedges they moved with every step.

Further along the same path, the Mes Demoiselles Orma dress caught the breeze. It is lavender, crossed with deep blue lines and finished with ruffled sleeves, and it is the dress we would choose for a summer lunch that nobody wants to end.

Linen in the dining room

Inside, our dining room has held a Chef's Hat four years running. Its tall windows look straight out into the trees, which makes it the best light on the property by late morning.

Zoe Kratzmann learned to sew on her mother's machine on the Sunshine Coast and still works with a design team of two. The Crest jacket and Edit pant are pure linen in rhubarb, a muted berry with earth underneath it. The jacket is finished with pickstitch, topstitching set back from the edge and worked to look done by hand. The trouser is fully lined, so it hangs straight rather than following the back of the knee.

At the next table, the Sense vest and Driftline pants in apple green. In tailoring, green like this is a decision you make once. Nobody else in the room will have made it.

A jacket that talks at the bar

The Vilagallo Helen jacket is a proper white single breasted jacket covered in small embroidered jokes. Bonjour on the lapel. A moka pot on one sleeve. A stack of suitcases at the hem with Ni con GPS me encuentran hoy stitched underneath, which is Spanish for not even GPS will find me today. Leaning on our bar with a glass of something cold as the afternoon stretched out, it felt exactly right.

Small things on the lawn

Out on the lawn, the Viktoria & Woods Stevie bag in wine red croc-embossed leather. It opens from a hinge at the centre rather than along the top, so the leather gathers softly either side. On its gold chain it hangs from the back of a chair and stays out of the way of the glasses. Back in the boutique, the Second Female Wila shirt in sheer ivory lace, its flowers drawn in a fine dark outline like a sketch held up to the light.

We do not choose clothes for a mood board. We choose them for a long lunch, a walk through the rows and the drive home in the dark.

Come and see it in person

Everything here is in the boutique at Red Hill and on the New Arrivals page, in ones and twos per size. Polperro is two minutes up the road, so an afternoon there and an hour with us fit easily into the same day. Read how it all began in The Polperro World, or book a table and a tasting at Polperro.

Every image in this story was taken at Polperro, Red Hill.