It's good to recycle old clothes and even better to see other people doing it too.

Spread the love and the faded FCUK T-shirts, I say. This month, "other people" included Princess Diana, who even in death is still getting her old clobber recirculated for the greater good.

You're not going to find any of it in your local Oxfam, though, not even those posh ones where they sell the good stuff. A collection of 10 dresses worn by her were auctioned in London and fetched nearly £800,000. Fetching the highest price was the gown in which Diana danced with John Travolta at the White House in 1985. Also under the hammer was the black Catherine Walker evening gown she wore when she was photographed by Mario Testino for Vanity Fair.

Swap Vanity Fair for the BBC's Countryfile programme and we see Prince Charles is at the fashion recycling game too, though perhaps fashion is too strong a word to use in his case.

Anyway, he made the headlines earlier this month when he guest-edited the show and gave viewers a look at what was later described as his "coat of many colours". In truth, that's a kind way to describe it: this is not something Dolly Parton would have been inspired to sing about and she certainly wouldn't have wowed 'em in Nashville if she'd turned up wearing it.

If you missed the programme and the now-legendary garment, it was the sartorial equivalent of Frankenstein's monster, containing the DNA of several outer garments and (possibly) one or two which traditionally nestle a little closer to the skin. It was part Barbour, part whatever you call those checked coats middle-aged men wear to watch rugby matches at Murrayfield, and wholly eccentric.

"I got somebody to patch it up with leather and now I can hardly move," the prince admitted, in between discussing rare breeds and laying a hedge with Julia Bradbury. Not his own work, then. Still, it's good to know the make-do-and-mend culture has permeated the royal family.

In fact, the Prince of Wales has long had what he calls a "passion for reusing and repairing". He's also quite a fan of vintage clothes, telling one magazine, "they save scarce resources and avoid waste". That was Vogue, by the way, not known for promoting continence and reuse where clothes are concerned.

In the same interview the prince revealed he even has a pair of shoes made from a bale of leather salvaged from an 18th-century shipwreck found off the south-west coast of England. "They are indestructible and will see me out." Out where, he didn't say – possibly to wherever it was he was laying a hedge with Julia Bradbury.

So has the reduce/reuse/recycle gene passed down to his sons? Up to a point, though his youngest boy seems to apply the last bit to his girlfriends more than his clothes. Still, it's nothing a stint on The Great British Sewing Bee wouldn't sort out.

barry.didcock@heraldandtimes.co.uk