Hats From Down Under

Waltraud Reiner writes to us about Hats and Horses, Sun and Fun.....

Hats! Hats! Hats! It's nearly summer 'Down Under' and along with the early suntans, hats are making their annual 'comeback'. As the sun gets stronger and the Australian horse racing industry again opens its doors to fashion conscious, fun loving young and young-at-heart, our thoughts turn back to hats.

Melbourne is traditionally the centre of the Australian fashion industry and the epicentre of horse race meetings because of the Spring Racing Carnival and the world renowned Melbourne Cup. So, come November each year, the two naturally come together to showcase the brightest 'fillies in the field'.

It's been that way ever since 'The Shrimp' shocked traditional race goers at the Melbourne Cup in the mid 60's with her outrageous mini! From that time on, the Australian Fashion industry and particularly the millinery community, has formed a strong alliance with the racing industry which turns eyes away from the horse and focuses strongly on Australian fashion on the fields. It's a great time for milliners and is usually their busiest period of the year. A great deal of money and thought gets spent creating 'looks' for the main three days. Derby Day, run on the Saturday before the Melbourne Cup is traditionally a 'Black and White Affair', generally a classier event as its namesake implies.

Melbourne Cup, always on the first Tuesday in November, has become renowned for its fashion extremes, from the fun of fancy dress and outrageously designed hats and headgear to elegant and beautifully crafted millinery creations. While the whole country may come to an official standstill for the three minutes of the race, most female eyes are glued to television screens all morning watching the Fashions on the Field parades, and admiring or ridiculing hat styles and wearability.

The big day in terms of hats, is Oaks Day (also known as Ladies Day), on the following Thursday. The best and most well kept secrets of fashion come out of the closets; the hats are freed from their hat boxes and adorn the heads of proud racegoers. And it's literally a sea of millinery - everything imaginable from flowers and feathers, Alice bands with veils, frivolous toy hats to oversized ensembles with lots of everything - all grace the 'Members' or the 'Birdcage' (actually a car park filled with picnic tables, champagne, strawberries and thousands of hats!).

The Melbourne Spring Carnival is a time for fun, for elegance, for the serious and the outrageous. It's a time when Australian women let their hair down. Or put it up and pop on a hat or two! It's a time too when they wear 'just the right hat' and relish their individuality and style. It's a time when some take themselves very seriously and others decide not to be serious at all. It's a time for hundreds of Australian Milliners to show their skills and fashion style. And in recent years, it has been a time when mainstream media begins to understand what the wearing of a hat is all about. It's the one time of the year when a picture of an Australian designed hat can make page 3 of the pictorials.

Australia as a nation enjoys great style, an infectious sense of humour, produces artists and designers of world-class calibre. Above all they have a sense of when to have fun, and how to create statements that epitomise the long hot, hazy days of Australian summers.

The Hat Magazine, p5, Issue 11, Dec 2001