On this Grand Final eve, Voxfrock has two choices: plunge into the psycho/cultural/aesthetic anomalies of Chinese poly-knit footy scarves and wacky-trackies in cackbrown and gold stripes or not-so-fetching purples, or acknowledge our lip-trembling proximity to the Spring Racing Carnival (Turnbull Stakes Day October 5, Caulfield Guineas Day October 12, then it’s all downhill – wheeeee! – to Derby Day November 2).
Exactly.
The Voxfrock team is currently thrashing out its edit of 2013’s best racewear, including millinery and shoes, and will post it in the days ahead of the Melbourne Racing Club‘s carnival of chic at Caulfield. So far, we forecast that flocks of Jean “The Shrimp” Shrimpton, circa 1965, lookalikes in sleeveless shifts and slab-sole, or block-heel or wedge sandals and loose hair will pepper the lawns of Caulfield and Flemington racecourses.
Racewear circa 2013, we found, has a distinct 1960s-esque back-fizz and, in celebration of that, we offer this flashback by editor Janice Breen Burns, to Derby Day 1965 when a gangly young English woman accidentally triggered a worldwide fashion revolution.
Miss Shrimpton has since disappeared from public view, as Mrs. Breen Burns discovered after several attempts to contact her since 2006. She leads a reclusive life, managing a small hotel in Cornwell, UK. In a poignant interview reported by London’s The Daily Mail in 2011, she confided her fear of ageing and being criticised for its inevitable, natural processes.
“I am a melancholy soul,” she said. Sadly, her fears were realised when a photograph of her, aged 68, strolling in her village, was published and rudely dissected by a youth obsessed public. Miss Shrimpton is 70 this year.
Jean Shrimpton
THAT DAY
She was a skinny, 23-year-old with windblown hair and colt legs, arrestingly pretty and so chic in a neat sleeveless frock, two-tone pumps and chunky brooch pinned to a fashionably flat chest. By the knicker-flashing fashion standards of today, Jean “the Shrimp” Shrimpton was modestly dressed. Demure, even. But this was 48 years ago.
Yeojin Bae
Above, Shrimpton chic, circa 2013, from Yeojin Bae ‘s current spring/summer collection: bow print silk shift $290. Want it? Shop here.)
She stood alone like an outcast below the Members’ grandstand at Flemington. No stockings (Mon dieu!), no hat and her knees brazenly exposed. (The hussy!) She stared defiantly into one camera lens, and another, then another, as a ring of news photographers thickened around her. She looked cross. Or was that just the haughty glare of the icy-coolest model in the world? One thing is certain: the elegant matrons of Melbourne were cross. Very cross.
“It didn’t take long to realise I had committed the most terrible faux pas,” Miss Shrimpton wrote in her autobiography 25 years later (Random). “The Melbourne women, in stockings, hats and long white gloves, were pointing at me and glaring.”
She had just slipped into fashion history and Melbourne legend, and the revolution, that still reverberates today, began.
Earlier in London, Miss Shrimpton had been given several pieces of cloth by the trip’s sponsor, Orlon, for her racewear. “It was left to me to design what I wanted,” she recalled in her book. But her dressmaker worried there was not enough fabric. “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she breezed. “Make them a bit short – no one’s going to notice.”
The furore that erupted at Flemington spread across the country and, in a day or two, the world. “My picture was all over the front pages worldwide,” Shrimpton wrote. “Fashion editors argued for and against this rather boring little short white shift.”
Within weeks, the mini was a fashion phenomenon with its (mostly young) supporters and (mostly older) detractors separated by what was, effectively, a generational cultural divide. Fashion would never be the same.
Almost five decades on, the “matrons” of Melbourne don’t tut any more. The sacred task of enforcing fashion protocol and preserving public decorum that once fell to their gender and generation has passed into history. It’s one of the reasons the Victoria Racing Club felt compelled in recent years, to assume the matronly mantle by suggesting that punters – particularly young women – put a stopper in their, er, enthusiasm, for dressing up.
In the real world from which the Spring Racing Carnival’s frocked and feathered youngest stream, the definition of “dressing up” still often means short, tight, high-split and deeply-plunged things better suited to nightclubs and year 12 cocktail bashes. And that is, technically, not what racewear is.
What it is, is “formal daywear”. Get frocked as you might for an afternoon wedding or garden tea. And, although stockings, gloves and even a hat are optional, the simple concept of elegant modesty is not. On the Chadstone Fashion Stakes runway at Caulfield and the Myer Fashions on the Field stage at Flemington, there will be no finalist deliberately picked in any cleavage-popping, knicker-flashing, stringy-split or sparkly thing. Assume that as a caution from one 30-year veteran of the FOF judging panel.
And, here’s a another timely irony for us all: what does appear allowable under the guidelines for racewear, circa 2013, is the same simple brand of chic that tripped such a fuss on Derby Day in 1965.
That’s progress for you.
Above, a modern alternative to Miss Shrimpton’s classic two tones; Pravda ALDO Rise pump from the pod collection designed in collaboration with London duo Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi of Preen. All styles in the Preen X ALDO RISE pod are $189.95. Want them? Go to www.aldoshoes.com
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au, Terry Carruthers, intern@voxfrock.com.au
