Queen Camilla is known for both her devotion to horses and her tasteful looks – and she brought the two together in a recent fashion success when she appeared at a celebration at York Racecourse in a baby blue dress and fedora. I find the look sophisticated and a little bit sassy, just like Camilla herself.
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First, let’s look at the dress – it’s an elegant light blue long-sleeved coat dress by Fiona Clare Couture, an English designer who is one of the Queen’s favorites. For this dress, Camilla kept her accessories to a minimum: beige low-heeled pumps, a small beige handbag and a bit of feminine jewelry. All this quiet luxury drew attention to the highlight of her outfit – a white straw hat with a matching light-colored knotted-texture band, worn slightly tilted to frame the Queen’s face. (Camilla is really a fan of face-framing hats.) The designer of the fedora is London milliner Philip Treacy. fashion called him “perhaps the greatest hatter alive” and over the course of his long career he created exciting creations for Lady Gaga, Madonna and Sarah Jessica Parker, among others.
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Camilla wore the fedora at York Racecourse in York, England, on August 24. The Queen is patron of several equestrian organizations and is known for her love of horse riding (although the 77-year-old told a group of schoolchildren last year that she stopped riding because she was “too old”). She is also a keen horse racing fan — she and King Charles inherited Queen Elizabeth’s racehorse portfolio. After her summer holiday in Balmoral, Camilla appeared on the final day of York Racecourse’s four-day festival to cut the ribbon to open a new complex at the racecourse called the Bustardthorpe Development. The project has been designed to be sustainable and includes rainwater collection tanks, solar panels and a “living roof.” It aims to provide racing enthusiasts with a place to drink, eat and chat.
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The day before her grand opening, Camilla went to the races as a bareheaded spectator, dressed in a blue suit, pearl earrings and a horseshoe pin with a lucky symbol, a fitting talisman for a horsewoman. (I will just say that blue is definitely Camilla’s colour.) A lovely image, but I like her cool milliner look with the Philip Treacy hat the best – and I look forward to more such styles from the Queen.
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