If you’re going to Royal Ascot in a few weeks, will you need to dress up? I only ask because the official Royal Ascot Instagram account posted a video in April of a cowboy in a vibrant cowboy suit and sparkly boots.
“Ascot presents The Ascot You,” the video reads, before the cowboy parades through Piccadilly Circus admiring himself in a Lillywhites window, accompanied by a suitably Once upon a Time in the West soundtrack.
It’s a smart suit and it looks very Dallas, but I’m not entirely sure you’d get into Ascot wearing it.
Certainly not in the Royal Enclosure, where fancy dress is not allowed. According to Ascot’s website, ‘custom-made top hats (e.g. with colored ribbons, feathers or decorations)’ are also not permitted.
In other words, if you went to the trouble of dressing up as the cowboy in this year’s advert for Ascot and then tried to enter wearing a hat adorned with rhinestones, you could very well be rejected. That would be a real pain as the badge to get into the royal enclosure this year costs £195.
The cowboy situation was brought to my attention by a disgruntled fashion stylist. “I’ve been having a lot of conversations with milliners lately, especially about their biggest week of the year and how orders are down,” she told me. ‘Customers don’t know what to wear and there is a feeling that Ascot is going in a very different direction.’
This year, for the first time ever, Ascot appointed a creative director, a chap called Daniel Fletcher and a successful young fashion designer who has dressed the likes of Harry Styles, Nick Jonas and Emma Corrin.
In March, Daniel unveiled this year’s lookbook, with suggestions for outfits for the different stays.
The cover features two women in polka dot dresses, hats and ties; inside, a woman wears a dress from a hip new label, Chopova Lowena, which appears to have bondage straps across the chest, and a man wears a tweed suit made by Daniel Fletcher himself, under the moniker ‘Grandpacore’.
You are a Telegraph reader and perhaps a grandfather, but in case you missed this 2024 trend, ‘grandpacore’ means wearing old knits, high-waisted trousers and maybe glasses.
Maybe you’re wearing them all now to read this piece, in which case congratulations. You accidentally nailed one of the biggest looks of the year.
There are some great hats in the lookbook, and models wearing vintage Hermes scarves and rented hats to make the point that you don’t have to buy a whole new outfit.
“Can you work with the pieces in your wardrobe to create a new Royal Ascot look or take your mother’s old prom dress and have it tailored so it’s dress code ready?” writes Daniel at the beginning of the sustainable section.
I would venture to guess that a large number of people at Ascot, at least in the Royal Enclosure, do not absolutely know what a ball is. But I could still ask my mother.
However, Ascot’s attempts to attract a younger following have caused some controversy, and traditionalists are not happy about it. “All this ‘be who you want to be’ stirred things up,” someone tells me. ‘If you want to be who you want to be, don’t go to Ascot to celebrate the royal family.’
A milliner points out to me, with what sounds like genuine disgust, that there are ‘men in sweaters’ in the lookbook, as if wearing a sweater to the racecourse marks you as some kind of pervert.
“The style guide is confused, made by someone who doesn’t understand the tradition,” the milliner continues. ‘I despair!’ explains the stylist.
Should Royal Ascot adapt or not? It’s been going on for a few years now. In 2017, it was declared that women could wear jumpsuits in the royal enclosure; in 2021, the big news was that men could wear navy blue morning suits, instead of black or gray. Keep the buffs stable, and so on.
You may have seen some ads of the week this year that said, “There you are. And then there’s the Ascot you.’ In one, a woman wears a floor-length dress in a laundromat. In another, a man in a tail and top hat holds a fork in an allotment.
A bit patronizing perhaps to hang models dressed for Ascot in locations like a launderette and an allotment – but you can see what they’re trying to do. It’s not just for the toffs, is their point. Anyone can go to Ascot.
Last year I went in a bright pink pantsuit and Panama hat, but this year I declined the invitation. Not because I’m shocked by the lookbook; simply because I didn’t enjoy it. It was an extremely kind invitation from some very kind friends and we had a lovely lunch in the car park, but the 10.47am from Clapham Junction was a highly unsanitary experience, the racecourse was too busy, we barely looked at a horse, and to When we got back on the train, we were held in rows of cubicles, and nothing takes away the glamor of a day like being chained up at the end of it.
Racetracks have to make money, just like everyone else these days. But should Royal Ascot try harder to enforce standards? It is expected that the King and Queen will still go this year. Should Camilla wear a bondage dress?
Quite a few friends I survey say they no longer care about the week, that it has changed over the past decade and become like many other race meetings: too drunk, too busy, too uninterested in horses.
An Australian racing fan suggests the focus on style and fashion is a possible attempt to divert attention from horse victims on the track, to try to strengthen the future of the scene when the sport is under fire for being cruel. Down Under, she says, race meetings are now called carnivals and are as much about clothing and headlining musical acts as they are about racing.
Could that be the future here? We will see. But good luck if you go in a few weeks, and don’t despair if you don’t need a hat.
A Stetson might be the solution. You can say you saw it on their Instagram.