DRESS FOR ROYAL TOUR

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27124, 21 August 1953, Page 8

DRESS FOR ROYAL TOUR

Informality Sought On Racecourses NORMAL CLOTHING TO BE WORN (* rom the London Correspondent of “The Press”) LONDON, August 13. Reports from New Zealand and Australia that men’s tailors there are doing a flourishing trade making foruUl?is wear at race meetings which the Queen will attend while on the Royal tour next year have SH? ed . s l me amusement in London. Without the aid of such helpful dresshire establishments as London’s renowned Moss Bros.—a firm which normally dresses more than half the male escorts at any Royal garden party or formal day function in Lonaon Australian male racegoers are reported to be making frantic efforts to buy grey toppers and morning suits to wear at Royal race meetings there

Dress instructions” issued by Buckingham Palace as a guide to dressing merely ask that the normal dress worn at summer race meetings in New Zealand and Australia should be worn for the Royal Party’s visits This advice—it cannot really be ca “ed an instruction—is in keeping with the Queen’s wish that her visits to race meetings on her tour should be considered as “off-duty” relaxation for the Royal Party and should be as informal as possible. It can hardly be construed as an intimation for Commonwealth racegoers to struggle into unaccustomed morning suits and grey toppers.

Although for Ascot week, which is really a Royal garden party with the racing as a background, the Queen and her suite attend in formal wear, at most other race meetings the Queen goes to in Britain, she dresses informally while the Duke of Edinburgh and his staff wear lounge suits and bowlers. The Queen is a great racing enthusiast and her interest on racecourses is confined to the horses and the racing and not to any incidental fashion parades. Restrictions In Britain Enthusiasts for formal wear at the Royal meetings at Ellerslie, Trentham and Addington perhaps overlook the fact that on the few English courses where formal dressing is a long established custom, there are restrictions on the numbers of people allowed in and near the Royal enclosure. The Royal stand at Ascot has a separate entrance and suite of rooms and a reserved passageway tn the saddling ring. Enclosures that the Queen and Royal Party ma Y choose to enter on English courses are also extremely expensive by comparison with New Zealand admission prices and there is consequently no great press of people about as would be the case at an

ordinary main summer race meeting in New Zealand. Apart from fhe Royal enclosure it Ascot, where applications for admission are scrutinised by the Duke of Norfolk, the lawn and paddock at Ascot (with its background of champagne bars and club tents) has an admission charge of about £3 for i day. The paddock at Epsom where the Queen sometimes strolls to inspect the horses costs £2 10s to enter. And at Epsom you cannot even see the course from the paddock. Unless special enclosures are built around the members’ stands or grandstand at Ellerslie, Trentham and Addington, and admission prices .to the grandstand enclosures increased considerably for the Royal meetings, the number of formallv dressed men & the enclosures will be necessarily swamoed by their normal and co®* fortably dressed colleagues. But the latter will be providing a setting wr what the Queen and the Royal Party desire—a happy day out at the race! at a normal New Zealand meeting ana not a pale, local imitation of Incowparable Royal Ascot.