FROM THE ARCHIVES:Caroline Mitchell was apprehensive, as the headline put it mildly, about Ladies' Day at the Dublin Horse Show in 1960. – JOE JOYCE
TOMORROW IS Ladies’ Day at the Horse Show, and you don’t have to be clairvoyant to know that hundreds of eager little fashion beavers are dashing away with the smoothing-iron at this very minute in order to qualify for the press photographer’s notice during those few hours of sartorial free-for-all which could, but hardly ever do, set the year’s standard of fashion in this country.
It’s a pity that the traditional trappings of glamour, such as those associated with the Horse Show, should act as an intoxicant instead of a mere stimulant to inspiring elegantes. Dim little women, with an unexceptional record as far as clothes are concerned suddenly go berserk at Ballsbridge in August, and their Horse Show efforts form the great single annual blot on their fashion escutcheons.
They are inclined to confuse cocktails with affairs of the horse (although, I don’t really blame them here, for the show merges indistinguishably into the cocktail party as the shadows lengthen in the rings). But I don’t see why, even if you have a series of such late-afternoon engagements you should turn up at Ballsbridge early in the morning, dressed as a lady-in-waiting for the indoor sport to come.
Far better to rush straight to the party from the Show (looking as if you took some interest in the thing for its own sake) than hang miserably round some sheltered corner guarding your peep-toes and bare back from those elements which don’t penetrate to the cocktail party.
The vogue for the waist-plunging back, so pretty in evening dresses and for formal late-day wear, and also so greatly featured for this summer and for the coming autumn and winter, has been given some unfortunate airings already during the last couple of months.
I’ve seen gooseflesh creeping downwards to waist level on the backs of young women (and of more mature years) at outdoor functions where more suitable garb would have been a double layer of tweed all over; and we all have observed the gyrations over damp grass of the stiletto-heeled brigade-with equal destruction to the grass and the shoes.
I admit there’s nothing much you can do about the shoe problem, for most of us would rather stop at home than turn out in anything but Italianate courts to any entertainment except a scout jamborette or a cruise round Dublin Bay: but agony at the base and a withering chill along the spine do not add up to a pretty face.
Maybe we shall look our last [on] those back-combed erections known as beehive hairstyles during this Horse Show. I sincerely hope so, anyway and the swollen-headed little girl with the tightly-bound hips and the knee-revealing skirt, topped by an immensity of baggy mohair, is teetering off the fashion scene, speed her departure, dear readers, and let her rest in peace when she finally disappears.
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