The Sloane is dead. Long live the Sloane! Annabel's is passé, The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook is out of print and even Princess Diana, once the figurehead of all good Sloanes, is no longer with us. Merely the memory of Sloaniness feels as out of touch as a racist remark made by a Tory MP.
If you missed out on the Fulham scene in the early 80s, the internet helpfully provides specific definitions of the Sloane Ranger, much in the way it does a rare species or a little-known technical term: "An upper-class, non-intellectual, conventional . . . wealthy, green welly-wearing young person, especially in and around London. Sloane Rangers know there is a time and a place for everything."
Peter York, co-author of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, adds: "The Sloane was a whole social phenomenon in the mid 80s, really about upper-middle-class social conventions and styles. It was not a life of the mind, but you knew where you were."
And yet the Sloane seems to be making Gucci loafer-shod strides back into the mainstream. This summer's fashion contains so many elements of original Sloane fashion, one could think that all those Hooray Henrys and Fulham Fionas had jacked in their jobs in the city and PR, and turned their hands to designing.
York describes the Sloane look as "middle-aged fashion for young people", a description that could apply to many clothes seen in today's fashion magazines. There are primly sweet blouses and strings of pearls from Chanel; striped tops with matching skirt of sensible length from Ralph Lauren and Miu Miu; rugby shirts by Clements Ribeiro; matching shoes and handbags from Louis Vuitton; and as for the floaty floral skirt falling below the knee, twinned with flat shoes, we are positively spoilt for choice - Alberta Ferretti, Marc Jacobs and Prada have all turned their hands to this most archetypal Sloane girl item of clothing. Meanwhile, fashion goes all horsey over at Chloe and Fake London has Pony Club-style rosettes, making the wearer look as though she has just returned from her local point-to-point.
"There has been a definite resurgence among our younger customers for our matching clutch bags and shoes, like that we saw 20 years ago," says Aydin Kurdas, creative director of Gina, the Sloane Street-based shoe store. "We've even revived our V-neck court shoes with the round toe which were a big seller in the early 80s."
And now Sloane fashion has hit the high street, 20 years after its hey-day. Copies of that Prada black and white floral skirt can be found in Oasis, Topshop and Kookai; men's blazers have arrived in H&M; matching bags and shoes can be found in any high street shoe outlet.
Yet Sloanes, despite having a very distinctive style of their own, were decidedly anti-fashion, opting for Barbour instead of Bond Street. So for their style to appear in high fashion stores today seems perverse.
"Well, there has been an ironic take on everything else from the 80s," says Vassi Chamberlain, senior features editor of Tatler magazine. "So why not Sloanes?"
The answer to that would be, because Sloanes were not in fashion from the start. It is notable that few British designers have partaken in this Sloane revival, leaving it instead to the Americans (Marc Jacobs), French (Karl Lagerfeld) and Italians (Miuccia Prada). The handful of British exceptions are keen to distance their designs from any references to Sloaniness. Clements Ribeiro say their rugby shirts come simply from "our love of stripes". Fake London's designer, Desiree Mejer, insists that her rosettes have no connotations of "poshness": "At Fake, we specialise in everything British and we just thought the rosettes were a major part of this Britishness."
Only Luella Bartley embraced this ironic version of Sloane fashion in her second show two years ago, memoraby entitled Daddy, I Want A Pony. The collection included city boy shirts for girls and quilted jackets.
Yet how (and why) has this notorious Sloaney look been adopted by the fashion world? Maybe it is the last bastion of this year's ransacking of the 80s and plays into fashion's love of all things ironic - it is hard to see Balenciaga's pinstriped denim or Clements Ribeiro's rugby shirts in luxe cashmere as anything but tongue-in-cheek.
Perhaps, though, it simply reflects today's mood. Thanks to the strengthened economy, obvious demonstrations of wealth are back, at least in fashion. Like last season's trends for logos and high-octane glitz, Sloane-inspired fashion is a statement of wealth and belonging to a certain social class. But this suggests that Sloane fashion is the natural state to which we return in a stronger economy - a terrifying thought.
What's more, the Sloane way of life has returned in a wholly non-ironic form, updated for the 21st century. To be a Sloane in the 1980s, one had to wear the right clothes (see above), go to the right venues (Tramp, Annabel's) and have the right family name. To be an It girl today, one doesn't need to do anything but wear the right clothes (tight jeans, Anya Hindmarch bags, glitzy stilettos), go to the right clubs (Attica, China White's) and have the right family (Palmer-Tomkinson, Hervey, even Aitken). Plus ca change.
Chamberlain disagrees, however, insisting: "It girls are much more mainstream, much more hip than the original Sloanes." York adds: "These girls are more like aristocrats than Sloanes, with their addictions and general behaviours. Sloanes are more controlled."
But the fact is, while the details may differ, the general spirit remains the same. If celebrity can be coined from a style proclaiming your social group, if a whole social clique can be created and celebrated by the media simply by being wealthy and attending the requisite nightspots, then perhaps a revival of 80s Sloane fashion is just what we deserve.