Racetrack Fashionistocrats are a particularly Melbourne-esque tribe that evolved and spread around the country. Meet some of the most sophisticated in the third instalment of our series: Fashion Tribes (first published in Spectrum/The Saturday Age/The Sydney Morning Herald ) Click back later to meet Denim Nerds, Sneaker Heads, Racetrack Fashionistocrats and Bush Doof and Festival girls, five of the myriad tribes in modern Melbourne.
Words: Janice Breen Burns Photographs: Simon Schluter
Carle Rutledge loves gloves and proper hats and longish skirts that flutter elegantly or swishswish as she walks in her flatteringly high heels. On most average streets and days, Rutledge’s hyper-glamourous ensembles might draw ego-lacerating looks, such is the public’s typical tolerance for sartorial radicals. “People would think I was mad,” she agrees.
But on race days, specifically gala days such as this week’s Spring Racing Carnival, Rutledge is just one peacock in a flock of many gobsmackingly glamourous peacocks on their way to the Fashions on the Field (FotF) competition enclosure.
They are the serial entrants for whom one more catwalk, one more winning sash, one more backstage face-to-face catch-up with their social media-connected tribe is never enough. They drive and fly to racewear competitions around the country, all year. They wrangle hatboxes and garment bags into car boots and overhead lockers, and their radars are perpetually pinging for a bathroom to change in. “Actually I’m terrified this could die out one day,” Rutledge worries. “It just brings so much joy.”
It’s unlikely that will happen. Like so many fashion tribes, Racetrack Fashionistocrats evolved out of a collective longing for something lost. Definitions of femininity have altered dramatically in recent decades and these fashion-loving-istocrats of racewear mourn the shift away from classic archetypes. So on weekends, they do ladylike glamour like a 1950s movie siren, but modernised for current fashion trends and creatively skewed to their individual tastes. The results are invaribly lovely. “I remember my first (major FotF) in Sydney,” says Angela Menz, a familiar and strikingly beautiful spectacle on the country, regional, interstate and even international FotF circuits since 2006. “I was in this crazy outfit, massive hat, basically an explosion of ribbons, totally over the top, but I got a place. It was so exciting!” And she was hooked. By 2011, Menz was a serial entrant in her mostly home-made ensembles and won the Myer FotF national competition with a Lexus car among its stonkingly rich pool of prizes.
Sashes and prizes however, are bonus benefits, not the main game. For many, like Indonesian-Australian Elis Crewes, who entered her FotF in 2001 then hundreds more until she took out last week’s NSW state final of the Myer FotF, the tribe is spirit-lifting and life-changing. “It keeps me going,” says Crewes. “It makes me not lonely. I miss my mum and brothers; I have no family here, but have fashion. I love fashion. Fashion keeps me here.”
The Age, Spectrum. FAshion Tribes series , FAshions on the field ladies. story by Jan Breen Burns. Pic Simon Schluter 18 October 2018.
Left to right: Carle Rutledge, 39, construction industry community liason consultant, wears Roksanda dress, own designed and crafted hat, MNG shoes, Mimco jewellery and Bag Queen clutch.
Angela Menz, 34, shoe designer/milliner, wears her own designed and made dress and hat, assorted neck pieces from her archive, Bionda Castana shoes and Cotton On sunglasses.
Elis Crewes, 34, Desigual fashion consultant, wears Hartono Gan (Indonesia) dress, Taboo Millinery headpiece and earrings, and YSL shoes.
Caitrin Kelly, 33, paediatric nurse, wears Felicity Northeast Millinery hat, Fiona’s of Mornington dress, Bag Queen clutch and Carvela shoes.
Peta Bell, 28, legal assistant/occupational therapy student, wears Alice McCall skirt and blouse, Marla Millinery hat, vintage scarf, Lovisa earrings and vintage shoes.
