Fashion meets horses and fun

Newmarket, United Kingdom

“You don’t understand...”

“I do understand.”

“Well you don’t understand modern fashion.”

And that, of course, was true. I wear trousers until they fall off, rotate two shirts until they are in tatters, love my open-toe sandals, and have all but forgotten how to tie my tie.

It was Newmarket’s Guineas Saturday, the first Classic flat race of the year, and the world had come to Suffolk. The Jockey Club, that beacon of the race-going fraternity, had been in full throttle for ages. Somehow, they had told the world that Newmarket was where you had to be. I knew Guineas Saturday would be a corker the moment a friend from Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa had wished me a grand occasion. That was a whole month earlier, my well-wisher being a colleague who spent most of his life in a straw hut. His view was clearly simple. All Blighty did was to breed and race horses. Football? What’s that? Cricket? I may have heard of it. Boxing? Isn’t that something to do with broken noses? No, in the United Kingdom there was one Sport of Kings - horse racing - and that was what the British simply did.

The first ever horse race in Newmarket was in 1622, a match for £100 between Lord Salisbury and the Marquess of Buckingham, the racecourse appearing 14 years later. The Guineas, or actually the 2000 Guineas, was first run in 1809 and was named after the prize money of the day, which was in general circulation at the time. Two thousand guineas then is the same as £122373 today. Yet racing has clearly become more popular, and better funded, as the prize fund now is half a million.

The problem is not the racing. In Newmarket that cannot be second to anything. They have the sport so polished you need sunglasses to reduce the glare. The dilemma is…how do I put it…well, the dilemma is the clothing. In Newmarket they like you to look smart.

“Racegoers,” the Jockey Club declares, “like to make it a special occasion and choose to dress accordingly.” And that is when the trouble starts.

“I’ve got nothing to wear,” said one, wardrobe long since unable to close thanks to a surfeit of clothing.

“Oh,” was all I could muster.

“And shoes. Look at this.” A hand gave a casual wave in the direction of a pile of footwear - more colours than a rainbow - that would have endangered life had it avalanched.

“Oh,” I continued.

“You’re no use,” came the reply. “What do you think?” added my interrogator, turning to ask a fellow sufferer who was also struggling with fashion choice.

“Wonderful. All perfect. You look just the ticket.”

“Ticket?”

“You know what I mean. You look great.”

“See?” said my interrogator, turning back towards me. “That’s what I call perfect advice.”

With a slouch to my shoulders I turned and headed towards my own wardrobe, confined to some tiny and distant corner, blew away several cobwebs, and opened the closet’s slatted doors to survey a line of neglected suits. They brought back memories of a time when smart dress was de rigueur in the workplace, when everything white was starched, and when collar stiffeners were essential and could even be used as lockpicks.

“Now what on Earth do I wear?” I thought. That suit, this jacket, those trousers; how about a tie? Someone, please someone, even a higher power, maybe better a higher power, please will someone guide me?

I glanced through the window. Sunny. I had already seen a magnificent dawn breaking above the gallops and it was clear the Guineas would be a scorcher. Forecasts were for temperatures well into the mid-twenties.

And then it came to me. It was a sentence I had almost missed; buried in the Jockey Club’s instruction, reminding all that a bare chest would not be acceptable, ripped jeans were a no-no and swimwear an utter non-starter. “Imagine you are going to a smart wedding,” it had said. So that was what I did.

Suit, tie, lookalike Fedora, and brown shoes, definitely not black.

The racecourse, the famous Rowley Mile, is something different when in racing overdrive. The place is like a carnival - music, drink, food assured to shorten your life by decades thanks to its high fat and preservative content, and plenty of millennials talking loudly as their alcohol takes hold. Many do not make it to the grandstands. For them the Guineas is the bar. There are men stuffed into jackets that look way outside any comfort zone and being sported just for the occasion. Others in posh, tailor-made suits. Few in shorts, none in tee-shirts, and plenty who had as much trouble tying a necktie as me. But folk were trying, and enjoying the opportunity, the occasion, that feeling of lift that somehow only British horseracing can give. You would have to be truly po-faced not to be gathered up by the Guineas.

And the ladies? Oh boy, the ladies. In this era of Me Too and gender equality, I must be careful what I say. But the Guineas welcomes some serious fashion. It hits you the moment you walk in the gate. Many have spent a considerable time working out what to wear. Credit limits have been stretched, overdrafts ignored, family savings pilfered. At the Guineas there is plentiful money on display and that is just the clothing before even contemplating jewellery and handbags.

Body-hugging, not-so-hugging, baggy for one or two. Spots and stripes never mix? Yet at the Guineas they certainly do. Pink and red, forever dead? At the Guineas they seem immortal. And length? Gulp. Short for some, too short for others, long, too long and in-between. Thigh-split yes, thigh-split no, and trousers if undecided. And makeup? That must be when I bow out from any form of opinion. Yet I did see some who perhaps forgot to look in the mirror, with make-up applied skewiff.

And hats? Perhaps for some, not for all, with plenty wearing the now fashionable hijab. See and be seen at the Guineas. It is where fashion meets horses and fun.