As the year rolls on though spring, the run up to Royal Ascot becomes all-encompassing for Beverley at Beverley Edmondson Millinery. June is the busiest time of year for us here anyway with Summer weddings, Royal Garden Parties and many other horse racing events but for a milliner Royal Ascot is THE event of the year. All the build-up for Ascot actually starts as early as January, when Beverley and her staff first start taking orders for the summer months.
During the summer all the staff at Beverley Edmondson work longer hours, especially Beverley who hardly seems to stop even to sleep! This allows us to have the shop open longer to cover the busy period and ensure that we don’t disappoint any of our fabulous clients too.
At this time of year Beverley is regularly in the studio late into the night and very early in the morning before the shop opens as well as every weekend to ensure that she can keep on top of the custom orders and meet everyone’s deadlines but she is also frantically making stock for the shop as we sell so many hats that we need to restock the shelves very frequently throughout spring and summer. Beverley herself will make close to 250 hats for each and every Ascot. These will be a mixture of stock and bespoke orders ranging from the wild and wacky to a small and subtle.
Every year thousands of racegoers from all over the world attend the horse racing event of the year. Ascot began in 1711 when Queen Ann saw a piece of land where “horses could gallop a full stretch” and later that year the first Ascot ever was held. Today there is up to £4 million to be won in prize money and Ascot has become as much about the dressing up and socialising as it is the horses. Tradition at Royal Ascot is as integral to the prestige. Divorcees were not allowed into the Royal enclosure until 1955, indeed criminals and undischarged bankrupts are still not allowed. Ascot is as much (or more) about the fashion as it is about the racing, which makes it a spectacular event to attend but also people from around the world are waiting in eager anticipation to see photographs of the amazing designs on show. We love seeing our customers looking fabulous and having fun at Ascot!