Lifestyle | Fashion Celebrities, punters, and the usual guard of Britain’s upper crust are dusting down their tails and practising how to conceal their giant new hat’s fiddly elastic under their hair — for Royal Ascot 2024 has arrived. The five-day affair started with cigar smoke, sunshine and a smile from King Charles on Tuesday, June 18. It was a strong turnout from the royals, with sightings of Queen Camilla , unmissable in a Cobalt blue outfit from Fiona Clare Couture, Princess Anne , wearing a red, embroidered dress coat, Zara Tindall, who opted for a puff-sleeve, lemon Laura Green dress with gold flying-saucer boater, and Princess Eugenie in mint green Diane von Furstenberg.
Joining the fold was Lady Gabriella Kingston four months after the death of her husband Tom Kingston . She arrived, wearing a floral, collared Catherine Walker & Co dress and an on-trend Bottega Veneta clutch, in horse-drawn carriage with the Princess Royal and Peter Phillips, before being greeted with a hug from Tindall in the parade ring. The starry hotspot on the first day was the Royal Enclosure ’s ‘The Summer House’, where guests — having being dropped off in their Wheelys, this year’s “Official Chauffeur” — mingled over free-flowing Moët.
Penny Lancaster , wife of Rod Stewart, certainly made an entrance carrying a parasol made of fresh flowers, and joined the likes of footballer Theo Walcott and rapper Bugzy Malone. London fashion designer Daniel W. Fletcher is Royal As.