Presented by the Australian Racing Museum, ‘Racing Style: 50 Years of Fashions on the Field’ pays tribute to a favourite Spring Racing Carnival tradition, and celebrates the outfits that stopped a nation.
‘Fashions on the Field’ was created in 1962 to attract more women to the races. It is now one of Australia’s most prestigious fashion events, seeing more than 4000 entrants in 2011.
“The Spring Racing Carnival has long been synonymous with style and fashion,” says Helen Walpole, Curator of the National Sports Museum. “Visitors to the exhibition can trace the evolution of Australian racewear and view key outfits that helped shape both social and dress standards”.
The exhibition shows that although the rules of racewear have changed from a time when a hat, gloves and stockings were necessary attire, the true classics are always in style. When Fleur Olssen won in 1990 wearing a bright yellow dress and jacket, no one was more thrilled than her mother, Dale Olssen, who had worn the very same outfit in the 1972 competition.
The exhibition showcases more than 30 prize-winning outfits, with mannequins modelling the vintage classics – and sometimes-daring apparel – on a catwalk set up especially for the exhibition.
The National Sports Museum