The email arrived while I was eating Coco Pops at my kitchen table in my pyjamas at 9am on a Tuesday morning. It was, objectively speaking, probably the least royal way to receive an invitation to Royal Ascot. “We would absolutely love it if you’d join us in the Royal Enclosure this year!” Emma, one of my contacts in PR who usually sends me emails asking if I want free beauty samples from high street stores, wrote enthusiastically. Honestly, my immediate reaction was just excitement.
Champagne! Hats! People turned out so smart for races that it basically seemed like they were letting me into fun Disneyland for grown ups.
And then my brain sent me into panic mode. OH GOD DRESS CODE.
I’ve been to plenty of races during my time – anyone who combines a love of dressing up with a love of drinking during the day will tell you they’re basically the perfect event.
But Royal Ascot isn’t your average day at the races.
Forget “dress nice and don’t spill wine down yourself” – this is dress code enforcement so strict they have stewards at the entrance frantically measuring your hem lengths with shiny gold rulers. Well, maybe not rulers.
Fine-touch tape measures. The guidelines for dressing in the Royal Enclosure are so intimidating they almost sounded invented by teachers seeking new ways to torment pupils at strict boarding schools. Dresses and skirts must be knee-length or maxi, and they mean it.
Strap widths must be a minimum of one inch (ending bikini straps and yellow STRING bikini raff-raff even more popular than normal this summer, RIP), strapless garments are forbidden, cap sleeves and off-the-shoulder tops are a big fat nope. As for fascinators – those adorable little decorative accessories that most normal people think of as “hats” – well those are EXPLICITLY not allowed. If you’re wearing a hat to Royal Ascot, it needs to be on an actual hat base of at least four inches.
You know, like something your nan would wear to church in 1975. The rules for dudes aren’t much easier to decipher – they too must wear full morning dress with top hats. Unless you’re getting married or starring in an episode of Peaky Blinders, chances are you don’t just have “morning suit hanging around somewhere”.
My boyfriend pointed at the guidelines, sighed loudly, and started googling hire companies before I could even ask him what he was wearing. Purchasing an entire morning suit for the sake of one day at the races is not expenses-friendly, or kind to your wardrobe hang space. Luckily after my email panic (which consisted of drinking roughly 3 cups of coffee and down a very worrying Google hole of “does denim now actually count as morning dress?”), I realised that spending an entire weekend thinking about how normal people can stylishly negotiate ridiculous dress codes without spending more than their monthly salary on a “once-in-a-lifetime” outfit would actually be pretty fun.
Rather than attempting to casually browse_the_options online (hello, weak willpower), I broke down the guidelines into categories and started working out how to bang each box ticks in the most cost-effective way possible. The hat, was clearly going to be the hardest part. Millinery from probably-will-smack-you-start-holders starts at about £200 these days, and lets be real – when are you going to wear a giant shit hat like that again?
I live in Manchester. I work in marketing. Statement hats are literally my entire wardrobe.
The solution? The Weddings. My friend Kate text me, post-having sent a Very Desperate message to our group chat that basically asked if anyone knew where I could buy a hat quickly. “Mum has the hat she bought for Lucy’s wedding still” she replied. “She hates it and said you can have it.
It’s cream with navy edging – she spent about £300 on it but spent six hours outside wearing it”. Holy shit did that open a can of worms. Every woman in Britain with a sister over the age of 40 owns at least one unnecessarily expensive hat that they bought for a wedding or special occasion several decades ago.
THEY ARE NOT SENTIMENTAL ABOUT THESE HATS. They are THINGS THEY WORE ONCE THEN shoved in a hat box in the loft until they’re needed again. Hats are expensive – most people don’t actually buy hats, they rent them.
When your mum buys you a hat and then lets you keep it because she’ll “never wear it again”, hit the ground running and start googling potential outfits RIGHT NOW. Kate’s mum’s hat was FANTASTIC. Covered all my dress code bases, wouldn’t have made me feel under-dressed next to actual hats, and bonus – was free.
She even threw in a hatpin and tutted gently when I asked how to secure it to my head without it blowing away. “Make sure you can’t lift it with your finger”, she typed back. “Ask me how I know” Onwards and upwards. Outfit time. After ordering the hat, my first instinct was just to buy a dress.
One that followed all the guidelines – proper knee-length skirt, covered shoulders etc. etc. I even went out and tried on about 10 different dresses before swiftly realising that Royal Ascot is basically designed to make you want to wear a bespoke dress. HOW do normal human beings find something that cheques all those boxes – right length, covered shoulders, suitable for standing outside for hours on end, comfortable enough to eat and drink, but also something you’d actually wear again?
Luckily, when you think about separates instead of a single outfit, your options open up massively. Same rules apply – you need a skirt you can’t tug at to make it shorter, and a top that covers your shoulders. But suddenly I had loads of options, and would come away with a legit wardrobe addition rather than a “onesie” I’d never wear again.
First up was the skirt. Navy pleated midi from COS, at £85. Looked about ten times more expensive than it was, ticked all the guidelines boxes and – here’s the important part – HAD AN ELASTICATED WAISTBAND.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from spending a day dressed up drinking champagne – it’s all about that waistband. Anything NON-elasticated and you’ll regret your life choices come lunch time. Finding the top took a bit longer – something to cover my shoulders that didn’t look frumpy, smart enough to not look like I was wearing a sack, but that I could also see myself wearing to work again.
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Cream silk shirt from & Other Stories with covered buttons and a bit of puff sleeve – £73. Game. Set.
Match. The whole outfit – minus hat, which was free – came in at £158. Now, before you get all judgy, yes this is not cheap.
But compared to the £500+ some boutique dresses are asking for a “simple midi”, it was bloody bargain. Shoes were my next problem. I needed something smart but grass friendly, comfortable enough to last all day (more champagne things!) AND waterproof enough to withstand a British summer deluge.
Navy suede block heels from Russell & Bromley, at £185. They were by FAR the most expensive part of my entire Ascot outfit, but I’d been meaning to buy a pair of navy heels anyway and have worn them about 475738495 times since. Once I had my outfit sorted, nothing could stop me.
Naturally I laid everything out the night before, working out how I was going to do my hair to accommodate the hat, charging every device we were taking with us and packing the biggest handbag I owned so I could fit all the Day At The Races essentials inside. Hat was vetoed by Husband because of ‘maximum hat security issues’, so I popped mine on with approximately seventeen hat pins and enough hairspray to keep it intact during a category five hurricane. When we finally walked through the entrance to the Royal Enclosure I half expected to be kicked out – everyone else looked so insanely dressed up.
Surely they all had bespoke dresses?? Real millinery hats?? Clothes so fancy that the taxi driver would stop and stare as we got out of the car?? ?
Spoiler alert: they didn’t. YES there were ladies turned out in full-on designer – hats with price tags I wouldn’t spend on an entire outfit. But there were also plenty of women who clearly took the same approach I did; mixing highstreet brands with expensive accessories, doing the dress code justice without needing to flash a credit card.
Guys renting their morning suits because let’s be real, when are YOU going to wear that again? Dresses and jumpsuits that were separated so they could wear the bottoms more than once. After a day wearing mine, I was so thankful I’d gone for practical pieces all over.
The shoes didn’t sink into the grass at the parade ring like a lot of flat sandals did. That elasticated waistband came in handy when lunch was outrageously better than expected. And that seperated top meant I could discreetly adjust specific sections when need be, without ruining my whole outfit.
A few glasses of champagne in and I felt like a champ – I’d survived DAY ONE of Royal Ascot in a high street outfit and hadn’t flashed any actual skin. Looking back at photos now, I can honestly say I don’t feel underdressed at all. I KNOW people were wearing more expensive outfits than me – but that doesn’t matter!
What matters is that I looked the part, felt comfortable in what I was wearing, and bloody loved every second of it. The moral of the story is this: dressing for Royal Ascot isn’t about having the fanciest, most expensive outfit. It’s about looking ‘bout dressy’ enough to be there, without sacrificing comfort.
The people who turned heads weren’t necessarily the ones wearing the most expensive items, but the ones who wore what THEY would normally wear; a more luxe, smarter version of their usual style. Invite to a terrifying dress-code-strict event coming up? Use my hot tips and you’ll nail it: Do your research, and start with the trickiest bit first – for Royal Ascot that means hats.
Ask about borrowing if you can – hats are EXPENSIVE and the chances of you owning enough ‘special occasions’ to wear yours more than once are slim to none. Think separates over an entire look. You’ll get more wears and it’s actually easier to find items that fit you well.
Invest in a good pair of shoes – again, you’re doing Day At The Races, not a night out. You’ll be outside all day so comfort is key. Think about how British weather will impact your choices too – lightweight fabrics that won’t cling if it rains, avoid super light colours that might not photograph great.
If you know you’ll struggle to stay cool in a dress, think about a stylish jumpsuit instead! Stick to pieces you KNOW you’ll wear again – neutral colours, classic styles that won’t date too much.
Bonus points if they’re pieces you can re-wear for the office too.
Lastly – don’t feel like you need to reinvent yourself to fit a dress code.
Guidelines are only that – things you need to FOLLOW. But that doesn’t mean your entire outfit needs to be outrageous.
Pick statement pieces that fit with your personal style, and you’ll feel way more confident in what you’re wearing. Ok, time to get nostalgic again – here are some photos from the day: The borrowed hat went home with a bottle of fizz and a heartfelt thank you note. And will no doubt be sent to me begging to borrow it back the next time I need to look extra fancy apparently.
It’s sitting in Kate’s mum’s hat box right now – along with a billion other hats I hope – ready to be dispatched to the next exhausted mum who needs somewhere fancy to wear it to. I wear both pieces I bought for Ascot ALL THE TIME. I wore the skirt to work recently because it made me feel extra-professional AF, and I’ve worn the top loads with jeans for dinners out.
It honestly might be the best £158 I’ve spent on clothes in years. And bonus? It actually looks like I dressed up for it.
