When a days-long torrential downpour turns iconic Byron Bay music festival Splendour In The Grass into Splendour In The Mud, we can always rely on our nation’s most prominent influencers to treat the situation with an appropriate level of practicality.
Twelve hours standing calf-deep in mud while being pelted with rain? Sounds like the perfect opportunity to wear a pristine cream jacket and irreplaceable Givenchy leather boots.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet celebrity trainer Jono Castano and model Simone Holtznagel. The new it-couple were the real victims of Friday’s chaos – when the first day of the music festival was sent into meltdown after a deluge transformed the grounds into a swamp and organisers cancelled all headline acts at the last minute.
As all the Gen Z kids with weird haircuts cried about forking over $400 for nothing, Jono and Simone had bigger problems.
The pair had just disembarked a bus and trudged through the bogland to attend the Smirnoff Seltzer Springs event – a safe haven of glamour within the remote field. But before they’d even made it past the VIP ticketing booth, disaster was imminent: Jono was wearing a pristine cream jacket. Only the brave.
The garment was at risk of becoming an entirely new colour, much like the once-white now-brown Heron Preston trainers he was wearing.
And Simone? She was keeping warm in a $1,400 leather biker jacket and thigh-high leather boots. But they weren’t just any boots. Certainly not the ones from Bunnings that sold out in Byron days earlier.
“These are priceless – these are Charlotte Dawson’s vintage Givenchy gum boots,” she said, slopping a foot out of the mud to show the filthy one-of-a-kind boot. “She gave them to me before she died.”
Jono and Simone’s commitment to style is something to be admired. As if they’d be caught dead running around in those plastic bag chemist ponchos. Or dressed in his-and-hers plush novelty costumes.
The only way to have fun at Splendour In The Mud is to let go of all the dreams you had about looking good on Instagram. Cut your losses and ditch the elaborate ensembles you spent months planning. Just ask Lauren Newman, 24, who drove up from Adelaide with her boyfriend and decided to wear wetsuits, despite the risk of all-body chafe.
“I put all my outfits together but then thought, ‘F*ck it’. We’ve got the wetsuits ready for a surf, this is practical,” she said.
Also seeking refuge at the Smirnoff Sletzer Springs compound was former The Bachelor contestant Konrad Bien-Stephen. He confessed to not having the same commitment to fashion as Jono and Simone.
“I packed 25kg of clothes I probably can’t wear now – party shirts and singlets,” he said. “Tomorrow, I’ll probably just wear a clear poncho.”
Eh, we’re sure Simone can probably lend you an old fur jacket that Karl Lagerfeld gave her before he died.
As the rain continued to fall and the mud got deeper, punters – who, with no major planned events to attend, just spent the hours drinking and getting dirtier – all had different perspectives about what their day had descended into.
“I feel like, at this point we’re paying for mud,” Corey, 18, said.
“It smells like a f**kin’ Kmart!” someone screamed.
“Does anyone else have mud bum?” another winced, picking at his behind.
Then there was Rafaella de Guzman, 21, who refused to let the weather get in the way of her fun. Her plan of attack was to get muddy by choice rather than by accident, so promptly submerged her body in the squelching earth.
“I love it regardless of the cancellation, it’s still a viiibe,” she said while eating a chicken skewer and twirling her filthy body joyously into a cloud of BBQ smoke that billowed out from a nearby food truck.
The fantasy of a festival and the reality of a festival never quite match up. Like, how did Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Moss make schlopping knee-deep in mud look so effortlessly chic at Glastonbury in the 2000s? Damn their skinny jeans and Hunter gum boots.
Some music festival punters still try to recreate those iconic tabloid looks by donning the English brand of wet weather footwear. A touch of glamour amongst the fifty shades of brown. The Hunter boots even became a hot-ticket item in an improvised bidding war.
“Some guy offered me $200 for my Hunter gum boots,” Gemma Helm, 20, said. “I said, mate, these were $240!”
The man then jacked up the offer to $500.
It still didn’t meet the reserve.
“It’s not worth not having gum boots,” Gemma declared.
Yeah. Just ask Simone.
Twitter, Facebook: @hellojamesweir
Originally published as James Weir recaps Splendour In The Grass 2022’s fashion in the mud
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