Royal Ascot is quite the thing as society occasions go and the royals turn out in huge numbers to celebrate being inordinately rich. Not only Brit royals, but royals from other countries flock to show off how wealthy they are.
Each day the male royals turn up looking really peculiar in what my granny would call "lum hats" (in that they look like lums (chimneys to non Scots), waistcoats and very baggy trousers, but, although they have different daft suits with tail coats and lum hats for each day, at least for them it's essentially the same gear.
For the female royals it's obligatory to wear something different every day, and, as you can see from the picture above Beatrice has certainly managed the something "different". Don't be fooled however, that she looks like something that fell off a flitting (a house moving for non Scots) apparently her costumes are (as I'm sure the costumes of the others are) incredibly expensive. The Daily Mail noted that her shoes alone cost nearly £600.
I reckon that there are five days of royal Ascot, and that suggests that this holiday girl has spend around £3000 on shoes for the week... slightly less than half the average retirement pension.
Isn't it a comforting thought that we are all in this together.
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| I wonder how much it cost to look like that... |
Going to the barber's shop for a hair cut, now that's a distant memory.
ReplyDeleteLOL. It costs £12.50 now!!!!!!!
Delete😄
DeleteI get it at pensioners rate.
3quid!
Is that your good lady wife with a bowl and a pair of kitchen sheers?
DeleteTwo minutes, with a razor, all done; not enough left for the barber or Arlene to do.
DeleteJust think how much you save in a year.
DeleteMaybe you could offer to do beatrice's too?
Just let it grow out, and grow a beard too.
DeleteThink of the savings in time, money and effort!
"If one person did it, they'd just call him crazy and refuse to take him [...] but if fifty people a day [...] then they might just call it a movement"
I've grown the beard, but still shave the head. I don't think the royals me with a razor, I may develop a shakey hand.
DeleteI hope you got a hat for the winter Jim!
DeleteLets take a guess at how much that outfit should cost, shall we?
ReplyDeleteThe lacy bits on the shoes can get quite expensive, unless they're just leather cutouts, which are a whole lot cheaper: £50 to £200, depending on manufacturing method and location, plus the rest of the shoe, which shouldn't be more than £50 from M&S, right?
The skirt is a simple, single wrap, with some poorly-done circles added. Material costs plus £100 for labour? Material looks like a thin canvas. Not sure on the price for that off the top of my head.
For the top, the cuffs are made from scraps from the skirt, so no cost for those. The gauzy stuff is probably a decent cost, but doesn't look fitted, call it £100 for material and another £100 for labour?
Goodness knows for the hat.
I'm basing labour costs off the fact my mum could probably run that up in a couple of days if everything was on-hand, and probably make those circles look a good chunk better in the process. And I've been rounding up everywhere.
Call it about a grand for a custom, hand made outfit from a skilled seamstress? (£10/hour and at least as quick as my mum on a sewing machine) Plus any custom materials.
Now, given that we know she paid £300 for the shoes, and I figure you should be able to get them for 2/3 that (assuming that they're custom-made and those are lacy bits, not cut leather), we can apply a "royal markup" of about 50%.
So she probably paid about £1,500 to look like that... Plus whatever she spent on the hairdresser.
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Jeez, what some people waste their money on. If I was going to drop that much cash on an outfit, I'd want something more like this:
http://framptonwiki541a.wikispaces.com/file/view/golden-elizabethan-dress.jpg/49290633/300x400/golden-elizabethan-dress.jpg
I think there's a premium for a "name" on stuff.
DeleteI remember I was early arriving at the Olympia in Paris for a petula Clark concert back in 2003. I had time to waste so I wandered down the Blvde de Capucines. A lot of clothes shops. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the prices which were marked on them and I wasn't going to be buying anything. (I was off to a concert!) Then I saw a pair of shoes I fancied, and I looked... and they were €950!
I stopped fancying them at that point.
I'd reckon that the £1500 was a very conservative estimate. It was, after all, £600 she paid for the shoes!
But even at your conservative estimate, going 5 days to the races and wearing something different every day, we are talking £7,500 for a week.
And will she ever wear any of it again?
The outfit you chose was very spectacular. Not entirely sure it would be that convenient for a day at the races though :)
"she probably paid about 1500 to look like that" No, she did not, you and I did!
DeleteWell we should be shot. She looks like she dressed in the dark from clothes that belong to someone else. Maybe a tramp.
DeleteWe are mad for paying for it.
I can look that bad for a damn sight less money than that!
ReplyDeleteLOL.
DeleteMy lips are sealed.
But for the £600 for the shoes, I could dress myself for a year in jeans t shirts and trainers. Not being a racing fan (they had to have a horse put down), I have no need to lum hats.
You can add to Beatrice's spending something for the costume for the Queen's birthday mass, and another one for Trooping the Colour. And I suspect it will all have been charged to expenses as this is considered official work for them, so we paid for it.
Sheesh.
Tris
ReplyDeleteIf the posh and wealthy want to waste their money watching horses run in a circle then good for them, can't think of anything much more boring other than test cricket and eventing, the fact that we subsidise our so called royals is a bit of a spewer. I really can't stand everything that the Windsors stand for, it's bad enough that it is undemocratic which I cannot abide, but they are pretty much a disgusting and useless family. Diana I was indifferent about as she tried to do some stuff, the fact they appeared to hate her kind of says it all, I think if I was one of her kids I would want as little to do with that family as possible but there you go.
But the wealthy live in a different world, they fly in and out and their feet don't really touch the same ground as ours, we are just the dirty unweashed to them mainly. Thats the problem today really, probably always has been, if you have a lot of money you have a lot of power. If you have little or no money you have very little power, and the power we do have such as a vote, not enough people care enough about it and the choices that many have are pretty poor anyway.
It's all very sad.
Bruce
No, I can;t stand them either.
DeleteI didn't always feel that way, but the way they behaved recently is abominable.
Then they bang on about being Christians?
Erm, what?
People starving and relying on charity and them spending thousands on clothes for one day... A decent queen would be doing something about the millions of her subjects who can't afford to eat; about kids looking for food in bins; about teachers paying for snacks for kids becasue they can't stand to see them hungry.
She wouldn't go to Ascot wearing different exclusives costing thousands, while people are hungry.
They pretty much all make me sick, although I have some time for Anne, and I did for Diana.
Racing is fun. Take a day out to Hamilton - Saints And Sinners is this week - or to Ayr. Its more than just cuddies ( horses for non Scots ) running in a circle.
DeleteBut I really just wanted to say, they're no a bonny lot ( good looking for non Scots ), are they?.
S.A.
I like the cuddies well enough, and I can accept that some of them may like the racing... but it's not really my thing and I'm not a betting man at all (Munguin doesn't pay enough for that malarkey!)
DeleteTo each his own though, SA, and there may even be some who like doing it in a lum hat and baggy pants.
I wish I wasn't paying for them to though... :)
Perhaps daddy paid for the clobber out of his kickbacks from the Gulf arms sales deal ?
ReplyDeleteWell, if that's true then I humbly apologise to Her Royal whatsit for impugning her integrity.
DeleteInstead clearly all my impugning should be directed at Airmiles and his dodgy deals.
Back from hols and think the Royals should be put on expenses until they are abolished instead of the allowances. The expenses claimed should be published weekly so they could be challenged. It might save a pound or two.
ReplyDeleteDamned good idea Marcia.
DeleteI'm pretty certain if the full cost (and what they were spent on) were known, you could count on one hand the number of years left to the royal spoungers.
...or even spongers...
DeleteGreat comments and pictures! I've always felt that these are MY kinda people, from which I was separated by some terrible accident of birth. I was born in the wrong country and without the requisite wealth. I am just a lowly "Citizen" of a republic (everyone here is like that) and although I long ago submitted an application to the palace for a Garter Knighthood, it has not yet pleased Her Majesty to tend to the matter. So much for social status! As for the wealth, let's just say that poverty is no fun. I doubt that I could even afford a general admission ticket to Royal Ascot, much less gain an invitation to the Royal Enclosure.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, considering all the uniforms, tailcoat suits, single-wear dresses, hats, etc, that these people show up in at various functions (kilts for Scotland of course), you really do wonder how many closets of what cavernous dimensions these people maintain in their various royal palaces.
Two things occur to me about the male attire. Why are those pants so baggy, and why do they tailor the legs to be so long that they pile up on their shoes.....such that the guys must surely walk on them with their heels.
Also.....is it an actual contest among the royal ladies to wear the silliest hat? BTW, I recently learned that some of them are not hats at all apparently. I'm told they are sometimes "fascinators."
Oh well, thanks to Tris and Munguin for showing me my rightful native social set at play. This is the closest I will ever get to the Royal Enclosure at Royal Ascot.....the place I belong.
Alack and alas, Danny, it's a know your place situation. And the place is the place you are in... not the one you should be in.
DeleteMunguin, of course mixes in these circles. I know becasue I have to attend upon his preparations. I can tell you though that there are no baggy trousers and nae lum hats.
There is a dress code for Ascot. I fear we should be refused entry>
https://www.ascot.co.uk/royal-ascot-style-guide
I read somewhere that the Queen Mother had a whole floor of her London home dedicated to her wardrobe. I have no idea whether it is true or not, but it's said that she never wore the same garment twice.
As for the hats... or fascinators (although what is fascinating about them I have no earthly idea)... twisted bits of cloth that probably cost a few hundred, if not thousand pounds...
You might like this article if you want to brush up on where to go for stuff that is acceptable.
http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/fashion/where-the-rich-and-famous-shop-in-london/
Yep, this is UKOK 2016. Some things never change, except for their awful clothes. Keeping the poor down, and the class, (caste) system going strong in UKOK.
ReplyDeleteBetttterrr togetherrrrr. It's what the naw voters wanted.
That's it Hetty...
DeleteIt's really weird that in 2016 things are getting worse. We have people spending thousands of clothes for a one off wearing, and we have a couple of million people unable to feed themselves.
A proud Christian country that the world looks up to or fears, according to Cameron... who doesn't even live on this planet never mind this country.
Every time I see articles about what Kate's wearing on a certain day or where Wills is swanning off to, I just think "I wish we were in a Republic". (An independent Scottish one of course).
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the tabloids would do without them... Fold? All good then!
Delete