Photographs: Monty Coles
Words: Janice Breen Burns.
For Mr. Coles’ complete photo essay of Melbourne Cup Day 2013, visit www.theloupe.org
It was just after 3 pm in the Myer Fashions on the Field enclosure. Super model Coco Rocha had been whisked away and burlesque legend Dita Von Teese tottered daintily back to the Birdcage. Oscar Calvo was still grinning with shock, his Myer Fashions on the Field “Design Award winner” prize (including tickets to Paris) clutched in one shaky hand. Competition was done and dusted for Cup day and the FOTF enclosure was emptying after a chock-full schedule of entrants, heats, preliminaries and finals culled by half a dozen mega judging panels each comprising up to 10 frocky people and celebrities.
Nearby, across Flemington’s soft grass and a frantic, shrieking, roaring crowd, Fiorente thundered into history. “That’s Gai Waterhouse‘s horse isn’t it?” observed one pretty young lagger in the FOTF enclosure to no-one in particular. Horses are mostly a distraction in here, or, at best, a motif to pattern a frock or pop on a necklace or clutch purse. “That’s nice, isn’t it? That it’s Gai? Because she’s really into fashion, isn’t she?”
You can bet your kitten heels Gai Waterhouse is into fashion. Our pretty young lagger was absolutely right. The ever-chic Mrs Waterhouse’s fashion credentials – as a passionate patron of milliners and couturiers – are renowned, and her status as “first lady of racing” indisputable. She is the embodiment of spring racing’s holy trinity of horses hats ‘n frocks. And, it’s the first time in history that synergy has been so precisely expressed; “Fashionable Woman Trainer Wins Melbourne Cup!’ (Earlier on Cup Day, Mrs. Waterhouse’s fashion celebrity daughter, Kate, had also added to the synergy, performing a kind of private family double duty as she judged frocks in the daily final of FOTF and admitted her own nerves were jangling for mum’s crack at the Melbourne Cup.)
History, of a type, was also made earlier today as 40-odd fashion designers had a crack at redefining racewear. The Myer Fashions on the Field Design Award is, ostensibly, only open by invitation to professionals with a registered brand. The last couple of years’ bouts, however, have redefined the competition itself and – just between these four walls and you and me – bewildered some established designers who now politely refuse to enter.
Increasingly, the field is left to those with more enthusiasm than measured restraint, the enemy of good racewear and good fashion. But, any definition of racewear is controversial in this volatile forum and the Design Award winners are equally criciticised for being too bland, or too stupidly ostentatious. Me, I err on the side of those averse to ostentation but also concede, racewear must evolve like any category of fashion. Just where bunched plastic, fluted satin, leg-long feathers, awkward bolly-sized hats and bouncing, cantilevered gold lace peplums, however lovely they may be in their exotic, costumey ways, belong in that evolution however, is beyond me and up for discussion.
In today’s wash-up, the mega-panel of judges included enough who, you might expect, would know the difference. And, their choice of winner at least, suggested they erred on the side of blessed restraint. Among them were Aurelio Costarella, Harper’s Bazaar fashionistocrat Thelma McQuillan, celebrity milliner Phillip Rhodes and The Australian‘s fashion guru Glynis Traill-Nash. Oscar Calvo, as mentioned before, won the award outright for a sharply chic green, white and black neoprene ensemble featuring lazered lace pencil skirt and pewter lizard squiggle head piece. Restraint, with a cleverly angled twist. Mr. Calvo’s design was a rare one-off, he says, but I sincerely hope it will not be his last
Follow Voxfrock Twitter and Instagram feeds, and Babbleonbyjbb Facebook posts tomorrow for a review of the Victoria Racing Club and Crown’s Oaks Club Lunch then on Thursday, Oaks Day, for a review of the national final of Myer Fashions on the Field, 2013. On Emirates Stakes Day, Janice Breen Burns will join the judging panel for the family category of Fashions on the Field and photographer Monty Coles will be there to record the children’s and teens’ competitions throughout the day.
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au
