Fashion event dropped

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33063, 2 November 1972, Page 6

Fashion event dropped

(N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent) SYDNEY, November 1.

Australia’s fashion event of the year, which gave Australia the mini-skirt and a host of other trendsetters, will be no more.

The Victorian Racing Club has announced the end of its Melbourne Cup Day “Fashion-in-the-field” turn-out and also its custom of inviting a celebrity guest.

“You never quite knew where you were,” the V.R.C. public relations officer (Mr C. Bennetts) said today.

"Often people couldn’t come at the last minute, or, like Princess Soraya, would get to Melbourne but never to Flemington,” he said. (Princess Soraya was the guest two years ago, but on arrival in Melbourne locked herself in her hotel room and would not go to the races.) The best - remembered guest is the British model, Jean Shrimpton, who, in 1965, startled racegoers when she turned out hatless, gloveless, and wearing a mini-skirt The storm that followed kept Australia talking for months, but in spite of the wrath of the Melbourne Establishment the mini was to stay. The club will make a concession this year by staging a fashion contest on the last day of the cup carnival, but the Cup-day parade will remain a thing of the past.