JKR

At The Hameau de la Reine, tucked away within the gardens of Versailles, Marie Antoinette played shepherdess, milking beautifully clean hand picked cows with royal porcelain milk churns. She was in part inspired by Rousseau’s fashionable “cult of nature”.  Now it’s a small jump from Rousseau to UK environment minister Hilary Benn, but bear with me…

In a bid to reduce the enormous amount of edible food we tip into landfills, Benn has called for consumers’ common sense to replace the “Best Before” date on packaging, recommending packs only carry the more necessary “use by” information. Not content with one piece of common sense, he has also suggested that Supermarkets’ standardised approach to fresh fruit and veg (where anomalies of shape and colour are rejected, Stepford wives style), is both unsound and misses the opportunity to celebrate variety.

I think Benn is very on trend: “Best Before” was originally used to promote brands’ commitment to quality – M&S made some fuss about it as I recall. But “with no plan B” the world has moved on. The middle class are embracing a designer make do and mend ethic, from Cath Kidston how-to manuals to Observer blogs on allotments. Variety and homespun charm are celebrated in fancy cup cake shops and the successful prints of the Keep Calm Galleries – it’s all sort of Blitz spirit light. Meanwhile, how many supermarkets must brainstorm around the “farmers’ market opportunity”  I wonder, whilst simultaneously rejecting spuds that don’t fit their template? Celebrating the homespun and honest is a brilliant opportunity for any brand which can live up to the claim: Budweiser have made great capital of their “born on“ labelling and Campbell’s have had huge publicity for their “grow your own tomatoes” initiative, which looks fantastic and makes the brand feel cool again.

The opportunity is less “austerity Britain” and “dig for victory” and more around a premium lifestyle choice – the influential New York Times style section this week praised the wonky grocery signs (below) to the heavens, and Michelle Obama’s Whitehouse kitchen garden initiative shows that muddy boots can be the height of chic. This might all be as fanciful as Marie Antoinette’s farm, but the first UK brand or supermarket to make a deal out of dropping the Best Before and celebrate the charm of non standardised produce could make a real splash.