Fashion Victim: Liverpool style is always a clear winner

Mar 27 2008 by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

OH, LADIES’ Day at the Grand National Festival. Doesn’t it just sum up everything that is great about Liverpool ladies and their unsurpassable sense of style?

While, officially, it is the horses on the track who are in competition, up in the stands the fashion stakes are also high. Now undoubtedly the highlight of the North West social calendar, it is hard to believe that Ladies Day, as we know it, is barely a decade old. It originally took its cue from Ascot’s famed Ladies Day and over the last 10 years the women of Merseyside seem to have made it their mission to prove that anything Ascot can do we can do much, much better.

Big hats, dresses that cost more than a month’s wages, sky- high stilettos and acres of bronzed skin are de rigueur, but so is attracting attention. Not too many years ago, one brave woman turned up at Ladies Day wearing only a bikini and, needles to say, her trim figure made it into most of the next day’s newspapers.

For many of the women who will be packing out the Tattersalls next Friday, the prepa-rations will have already started, with facials, tanning sessions, hair extensions and even botox injections all timetabled to ensure they look their best.

Of course, as you would expect of such fashion fans, Ladies’ Day is a big occasion out for Liverpool’s Wag contingent. Last year, Alex Curran stopped racegoers in their tracks in a tailor-made frilled shirt and shorts combo, while Coleen McLoughlin stole the show with paparazzi following her every move. Bookmakers Paddy Power even offered odds on what colour hat Coleen would wear for the occasion. Canny as she is, she outwitted them all by snubbing headgear on the Friday before donning a floppy 1970s-style Biba design for Grand National Day itself.

Since the introduction of the Looking Good style contest five years ago, which sees the most stylish racegoer leave not only with their winnings but also a brand new car, the pressure to look the part has never been higher.

When it comes to choosing clothes, city fashionistas inevitably home in on two places – Liverpool’s Metquarter, where the rails of Coast, Whistles and Co will no doubt be stripped bare of floral dresses and pashmina wraps and, of course, Cricket.

At the Mathew Street boutique, owner Justine Mills usually starts taking orders for Ladies Day dresses almost before she has taken the Christmas decorations down.

To my shame, I have actually only made it to one Ladies Day. Some years back, I was lucky enough to be availed of the hospitality of the Warburton family, who invited me to enjoy the spectacle from their box. It was quite a day. From the minute I stepped off the train at Aintree, my eyes were assaulted by a blinding array of colours at a level only usually seen at a Dulux mixing counter.

Which jockeys will take home the trophies at this year’s Grand National Festival is as yet anyone’s guess, but one thing is for certain – your odds of catching a less than impeccably groomed female at Aintree on Friday have got to be slim to none.