The September Edit: New-Season Penelope Chilvers, and What to Buy First
Western Spirit has landed at Penelope Chilvers. Here's what's actually worth buying for the change of season, plus how to get 15% off your first order.
There is a particular week in early September when London stops pretending it is still summer. The plane trees on the school run have gone a little tired at the edges, the Aga gets lit for the first time since April, and every good coat comes out of the cedar bag it has spent June, July and August sulking in. The royal calendar knows this week well. It is roughly when the family starts drifting back south from Balmoral, wardrobe already several steps ahead of the rest of us.
Penelope Chilvers knows it too. The label has just launched its new-season collection, Western Spirit, and it lands at exactly the moment a country wardrobe needs restocking rather than reinventing. The tassel boots are still there, because they always are, but there are new colourways, a run of embroidered cowboy boots that feel genuinely fresh, and the kind of transitional pieces that earn their keep from a wet September pavement through to a proper December frost.
This is our pick of what is worth buying now, while it is new and fully sized, rather than in November when the good sizes have gone.
Why Penelope Chilvers, specifically
The brand’s reputation was built on one boot: the Long Tassel, drawn from the traditional Spanish riding boots founder Penelope Chilvers discovered while living in Barcelona in the early 2000s. Goodyear welted, on a replaceable commando sole, made in Spain by the same artisan workshops the label has worked with since 2002. It is a boot engineered to be resoled rather than replaced.
Catherine, Princess of Wales, first wore her pair (conker brown) in 2004, well before her wedding, and has by the designer’s own account never replaced that original pair. Two decades of near-daily wear on one boot is not a coincidence; it is what “buy once” actually looks like when you follow it through.
It remains the one to own if you own nothing else from the brand: shop the Penelope Chilvers Long Tassel Boot.
What’s new for the change of season
Western Spirit takes the house tassel silhouette and pushes it toward a slightly harder-edged, western-inflected mood: embroidery, contrast stitching, a cowboy-boot toe on some styles, all without losing the country-house DNA that makes the brand work in the first place. Three worth knowing about:
The Goldie Embroidered Cowboy Boot (Peat, £359) takes the tassel boot’s construction and gives it a scrolled embroidery panel and a stacked heel. It is sharper than the classic tassel, still built to be worn on a Saturday walk and again at Sunday lunch.
The Inclement Long Leather Tassel Boot (Black, £499) is the wet-weather answer for anyone who has ruined a pair of suede boots on a September dog walk: genuine leather, taller shaft, built for the ground actually being wet rather than merely looking autumnal.
The Cassidy Suede Embroidered Boot (Slate, £269) is the entry point if you are trying the brand for the first time: a lower ankle boot, softer price, the same embroidered detailing scaled down.
New-season stock sells through fast on the popular sizes. The brand’s own bestseller carousel already shows several styles down to single-digit stock on standard sizes. If a colourway catches your eye, the advice is the same one we’d give about any well-made thing: buy it now, not in October.
Get 15% off before you buy anything
Here’s the practical part. Penelope Chilvers gives new customers 15% off their first order for signing up to the newsletter, a genuine, no-catch discount that stacks onto full-price new-season stock, which is not nothing on a £259 to £499 boot. It is a one-time code, full-price items only, so use it on the piece you actually want rather than saving it for a sale that may not arrive before the boots you like have sold out. Ready when you are: sign up and claim 15% off your first Penelope Chilvers order.
Worth knowing separately: Penelope Chilvers also runs a periodic End of Season Sale with a further 10% off using the code SALE10. It isn’t running at the time of writing, but when it lands, it is worth watching. See the current Penelope Chilvers sale to check what’s live.
Building the rest of the September wardrobe
Boots are the anchor, not the whole outfit. The rest of the royal-adjacent country uniform for the next few weeks is unfussy and mostly things you already half-own. It just wants refreshing where the summer wore it out.
A proper wax jacket does more work than anything else in a transitional wardrobe: it takes a cold morning off a jumper’s hands and shrugs off the first real rain of the year. Barbour’s waxed jackets are the obvious, correctly boring choice. Sandringham has an entire cupboard of them for a reason.
A pair of proper wellingtons earns its place the first genuinely soggy weekend, for the days even a Goodyear welt shouldn’t have to deal with. Hunter’s wellingtons are the standard the rest of the market is still copying.
A leather tote that can survive a station platform matters more in September than it did in July, once handbags start doubling as overnight bags for the Friday train north. The Cambridge Satchel Company makes the kind of structured leather bag that improves with a few years of scuffing.
None of this needs to happen in one order. Start with the boots, add the coat when the first proper cold snap arrives, and let the rest follow.
Why it still matters
There is very little genuinely new to say about a wax jacket or a tassel boot. That is rather the point of both. What changes each September is simply the reminder: buy well, buy once, and let a good boot outlast the season it was bought for. The Princess of Wales has been making that argument with one pair of boots since 2004. It remains the best-dressed argument in the country wardrobe.
Browse our full British countryside wardrobe guide for the rest of the season’s essentials, and Catherine’s country style for the full history behind the boots.
Frequently asked questions
Is Penelope Chilvers having a sale right now? Not at the time of writing. The brand’s End of Season Sale runs periodically rather than continuously. When it is live, a further 10% comes off with the code SALE10. Check the current sale here.
How do I get 15% off my first Penelope Chilvers order? Sign up to the Penelope Chilvers newsletter. New customers receive a one-time 15% discount code, valid on full-priced items.
Which Penelope Chilvers boots does Catherine, Princess of Wales, wear? The conker-brown Long Tassel Boot, first worn in 2004. By the designer’s own account, she has never replaced her original pair.
Are Penelope Chilvers boots true to size? The brand recommends most styles run true to size, though some silhouettes, including the taller riding boots, come in a choice of standard and generous calf widths, so check the size guide on the product page before ordering.
Where are Penelope Chilvers boots made? In Spain, by the same artisan workshops the label has worked with since it was founded in 2002.
What makes a Goodyear welt worth paying for? It is a construction method that stitches the sole to the upper via a welt, rather than gluing it, which means the sole can be replaced when it wears out instead of the whole boot being thrown away. It is the main reason a well-kept pair lasts decades rather than seasons.
Prices and stock correct as of September 2026 and subject to change; see penelopechilvers.com for the current range.
