It's Racing, Not Racy

The Age

Saturday September 29, 2007

Janice Breen Burns

Race wear is modest and ladylike, despite what you see at the races, writes Janice Breen Burns.

I have seen some icky things, the past few springs. Breasts, brassieres, thighs and knickers I didn't want to see. The odd G-strung bum. Of the 300,000-odd punters who flock to Caulfield, Moonee Valley, Flemington and regional spring racing carnivals each year, a stubborn peppering picked frocks that plunged lower and rode higher than the definition of race wear technically forgives. But I forgave them anyway, of course; for their exuberant youth (most of them), for their lack of parental guidance and because their passion for flashing it about must surely wane. Mustn't it?

Well, God help me; it didn't. Not by a long, sexy money shot.

So here we are again, poised on the slick pink lip of another spring carnival and I sense a tsunami of iffy race wear looming. More than last year. It's the season for stocking up on frocks and hats and matching G-strings and my desk has disappeared under slippery piles of press releases pitching plunge-necked, knicker-flashing spring race wear and every product a girl could possibly employ - split bolster brassieres, double-sided frock tape, chicken-fillet breast augmenters, transparent plastic-strapped G-strings - to keep those hectares of bare, faux-tanned flesh looking fabulous and firmly anchored.

OK. Let's pause right here. There is precisely nothing fabulous about a G-strung bum, whipped into eyeball range by every little breeze and bouncing step of a girl's high-heel platform peep-toes - boing-jiggle, boing-jiggle - below her micro-micro baby-doll frock-ette. Warm, sunshiney all's-right-with-the-world spring day at the races or not. Ditto those - admittedly mesmerising - glimpses of breasts unfettered up the other end of her racy ensemble. And, while we are on the subject, firmly anchored is also problematic terminology in this context. No brand of frock tape subjected to any more swing-weight than a double-A breast has yet, in my straw polls and anecdotal observations, delivered its firm anchor promise for the duration of a Saturday nightclub date let alone a full day's frolic at the races.

But I digress.

At this fortuitously fat end of the spring carnival, a weekend before tickets go on sale and a full fortnight before the world buys a frock and pours into Gate No. 23 at Caulfield, I suggest a moment of quiet reflection on race wear. By nature and definition, it is ladylike, pretty, girly, fresh, classic, sophisticated, dainty, exquisite, or all of the above. Women's race wear is elegance on a stick, a category that veers close to costumery, albeit within the bounds of ladylike and classic. It is the ultimate expression of highly civilised female-ness and femininity. Minus the phwoor! Kwoor! and the Get a load 'o that! (Getting my drift?) With all its components pressed properly into service, race wear can render the plain woman pretty, the trunk-figured a shapely goddess, the dull girl a vision of polish and sophistication, the ordinary into the extraordinary. One thing it is technically not, despite the exuberance of some wearers, is overtly sexy.

Not that there is anything wrong with overt sex. But, free-wheeling cleavage (upper and lower) does tend to muddy spring's spectacle of elegance, not to mention confuse those blokes on track who bothered to suit up, polish their shoes, invest in a new shirt'n'tie combo and fancy themselves sophisticated gents. Unfettered things also render the rest of us - in classic race-wear ensembles - undeservedly smug and not a little superior. (This is not necessarily a good thing, believe me.)

Coincidentally, as fashion makes a final, desperate rally to promote necklines that can plunge no further without meeting their hemlines, and micro-micro hemlines that can rise no further without bumping into their necklines, its pendulum is also swinging back strongly to the realm of womanly classics that fit snugly into race wear criteria.

Beyond the bulging racks of tack, you will find swishy, pleated skirts, proper blouses that clench into the waistline, and opulent volumes of frock that slap prettily around a woman's knees. The micro hemline's opposite number - the midi - sways around the mid to upper calf, and there are plenty of near-but-not-quite overtly sexy necklines that split upward in a V from a point level with the underarms to expose a ladylike expanse of decolletage that should placate those who can't function without flashing something.

Which race wear will you choose?

© 2007 The Age

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