Hatastrophe

I'm a Melbourne girl, so today, Melbourne Cup Day, always brings a frisson of nostalgia. And a litle moue of annoyance that people persist in getting hats so wrong. I read that the Fascinator was "out" this year, which must have meant a crisis of sorts in the estimable closets of suburban Melbourne. What will stylish Melbourne women do without a bit of net and feather to stick on their heads? Will they have to wear brims? Appropriately, if they have to run around like a pack of chooks with their heads cut off, they do it in a place called The Birdcage. In the old days, we had sandwiches and champagne out of our car boot and some of us even went down to the finishing line to watch the race. These days, people boast they haven't seen a horse for years. Now they like to huddle in tents and pretend they are in Versailles, surrounded by courtiers and kings, rather than the same old Sydney set who has just transferred to Melbourne for the week. (And, by the way, don't the sponsors who have taken Marie-Antoinette as a theme this year know that Sophie Coppola's movie is reportedly a dud according to the world's best film critic, Anthony Lane of The New Yorker?) Pity, they miss the genuine thrill of those horses thundering down the straight and the smell of turf being hoofed up. Love it.... As a little token of the day I offer up an illustration of a very chic hat by the divine Richard Gray, which appears in my book Perfect Pink Polish.