One wet horse. One exacting founder. One London drawing room.
In the winter of 1995, Lady Joanne McLeod-Hestpace kept watching her gelding, Balder, cool down too fast on the walk back from the school at her family's stables in the Home Counties. The rugs of the day either trapped sweat or shed heat — never both. So she cut up a merino base layer at her London home and made something better.
Word travelled the way it does between yards: quietly, and only if it works. Within two seasons Hestpace was dressing the private strings of some of the country's best-known riders — by introduction only.
The house has grown slowly and deliberately since — four boutiques, one small collection, and a waiting list for the rest. What has never changed is the standard Lady Joanne set in that first London winter.
