If you wanted to be an exquisitely dressed man you wore a white suit with a tight red rose pinned to your left lapel. Or perhaps you wore skin-tight white riding breeches, black riding boots with spurs, a Harris Tweed jacket and a drover’s hat. Indeed, hats have made an awesome comeback.
Could one recommend a Panama, or a wide-brimmed west-of-Cunnamulla felt, matched with a dry-as-a-bone cattleman’s coat?
One could be forgiven for thinking that a brewery had something to do with the Cup.
A horse so badly injured he was given up as a lost cause, and a jockey doctors said would never ride again, combined to win the million dollar Melbourne Cup yesterday.
London fashion designer, Zandra Rhodes.Credit:Staff
If you wanted to avoid seeing the Foster’s sign, you could only do so by closing your eyes.
There would not, however, have been more than five million Foster’s pennants. They were actually arranged in five miles of bunting.
They had Foster’s blimps, Foster’s on every passing helicopter, Foster’s on every saddle cloth and what was once Chiquita Lodge is now, dammit you’ve guessed already, Fosters Lodge.
They had Foster’s girls dressed as jockeys and Foster Blue Birds, girls with legs up to their armpits, and they were handing out Foster’s sun visors. I think I know all the morning suits at Flemington, the same ones have been coming back these past 30 years.
But John Elliott, chairman of Carlton and United Breweries and Peter Bartels, managing director, were there in resplendent new formal gear, complete with roses.
Model Leanne Edelsten at Flemington.
John Elliott said there had never been a promotion like this. They had put up a million dollars in stake money, and spent another million putting the whole show into action.
But for most people, it was terribly important to see “them”.
Unless you had super-power binoculars, it was impossible to get a good stare at the royal couple in the stand. But they did go for a nice walk down the straight, and I saw them between a yellow straw bow and a vast eruption made of pink tulle.
Lady Diana was very pure in classic black and white. But there was tutting amongst the London press. She had worn that outfit twice before, in Florence was it, and again at Epsom.
But I agreed with the Princess that it deserved a few more runs. After all, the hat I wore was purchased at George’s in 1959, and this was its 20th cup.
The Prince gave the best Cup speech since the days of R. G. Menzies. Indeed, it’s time someone gave
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him credit for his style and wit. That was a nice crack he made, that the chairman should have filled the Melbourne Cup with foaming Foster’s, but there was none available, it was all in England.
Finally it was a nuisance, wasn’t it? Doesn’t it make you mad that almost everyone you meet after the Cup had money on the winner, except you?
Your correspondent spotted Sir Rod Carnegie and ex-Melbourne Lord Mayor Ron Walker. Did they have money on it? Of course.
From the Archives, 1985: The race that stops a nation … What a Nuisance
Source: Philippines Alive
