Horse show guests are bowled over by tradition

THE elegant John Steed from the television series The Avengers would have felt at home on the manicured lawns of the Royal Dublin Society yesterday.

And so too for that matter would Sir Winston Churchill, dapper city business gents in London, plus Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy from the big screens.

Even those sons of Ulster who march on The Twelfth would have been content - sartorially at least - on the opening day of the 131st Dublin Horse Show.

All of them have been known to wear distinctive bowler hats, just as the judges in the horse showing rings did yesterday as they kept faith with tradition.

Not even the humid weather could tempt them to abandon their head garb as they cast their eyes over hunters of varying weights, while the fillies and finery created a sense of occasion in the showgrounds.

However, they were occasionally spotted raising their bowlers with stylish courtesy to the ladies in the colourful Ballsbridge complex.

But are bowler hats - splendid and all as they might look - an elitist form of head dress?

Not at all, say the protocol and fashion conscious chaps, who argue that the opposite is the case.

“When rich landowners brought their horses to the Dublin Horse Show in the 1920s and 1930s, they would also bring their servants and estate workers to handle the horses.

“The members of the landed gentry distinguished themselves by wearing silk top hats. Only the employees wore bowlers,” they explain with gusto.

There weren’t any silk top hats to be seen on the opening day of the show yesterday, but the tradition of the black bowler has survived among the judges, if not the exhibitors in general.

Most of those who paraded their horses in front of the hats in the rings wore the comfortable cloth caps more associated with country folk who generally shy away from the bowler.

Perhaps that’s due to a question of style, or they might have been aware of the fate of a man who risked wearing a bowler at a country show many years ago and was forever known among his neighbours afterwards as “a half-Sir”.

Old customs were revived, however, when Dublin Lord Mayor Michael Conaghan arrived in the horse-drawn mayoral coach with eight members of the Garda Mounted Unit providing an escort on Irish Draughts. It was the first time since 1919 that a police mounted unit escorted the Lord Mayor’s coach to the horse show, where style of a different kind will be on view today - Ladies Day.

The occasion should sparkle whatever the weather. Someone will walk away with a €10,000 diamond ring, courtesy of Appley, Dublin. It will be presented to the lady chosen as the best dressed.