Thousands of guests in glorious get-ups have been turning heads at a sweltering Beverley Racecourse, and none more so than this year’s Most Stylish Racegoer.
Emma Spicer wowed judges with her outfit – a cool white dress with striking black polka dots and matching monochrome fascinator, matched with black shoes. Emma, from Gunness in North Lincolnshire, said she was at Ladies’ Day with a group of friends, all of whom work for the NHS in Scunthorpe.
She said: “A few years ago we came to celebrate a 50th birthday and then this week we’ve come to celebrate a 60th. We’ve had a really nice day.”
Emma said she was “very shocked” to find out she had won the coveted Most Stylish title. “I’m a bit overwhelmed by it all.
“I thought they were joking because I left my phone on the table and they said, ‘there’s a phone call for this number, one of you has won best dressed’. Because we’d given my number to six of us, we weren’t really sure so then they had to describe the lady.
“My friend said, ‘oh, it’s our friend Emma, she’s the one with the white dress and black spots’. She came and got me out of the queue while I was betting on a horse – I had nothing with me, no bag, no phone.”
Emma said she had been to Epworth with her mum on Saturday. “I said, ‘I’ve got something for the races but I’m not sure about it’. I saw this dress in the window and I said, ‘we’ll go in’, and I said ‘I need a fascinator as well’ and the lady said, ‘we do bespoke make them, you’ll only ever get one of them’. I said ‘that’s fine, if I like it I’ll go for it’. So it was a last-minute buy really. And my black shoes, I’ve had these for ages.”
It was not the only luck of the day for Emma and her group. The friends had formed a syndicate and their first horse had won, she said.
“Then I put a bet on a 100-1, on Black Fury, only because they asked us in the quiz if Black Fury was running today, and I backed it each way and it came in second.”
The Westwood course has been awash with colour all day as racegoers gathered at the rails to see their hopefully lucky horses home, or mingled in the enclosures, all in unbroken sunshine.
Hull Live’s photographer Donna Clifford has been in among the crowds herself to capture all the beautiful outfits and the racing excitement of this annual occasion – see her gallery of photos below.