While spectators can’t attend this year’s race, they can still keep up its hat-wearing tradition at home.
As the 2020 version of the Kentucky Derby will differ in not having spectators, viewers at home may be keeping up the horse race’s hat wearing tradition. Here’s how this fun racing accessory became part of these festivities. According to Jessica Whitehead, curator of collections at the Kentucky Derby Museum in Louisville, the Derby’s fashion element goes back to early Derby celebrations and is drawn upon British and French racing traditions at the Longchamp Racecourse in Paris and Epsom Downs in Surrey, England. “The Kentucky Derby, which was patterned after the Epsom Derby, owes many of its rules and pastimes to its English predecessor,” said Whitehead. Colonel Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., the man that helped to establish the Derby and founded Churchill Downs, and his wife, Mary, traveled to England and France in the years right before the 1875 inaugural Kentucky Derby and noticed how onlookers at these racing events were well-dressed. “[They] were impressed with the pageantry and opulence of the spectators’ fashions, including headwear,” noted Whitehead. Back in Louisville, Mary acted as a pre-cursor to the fashion influencers we know today in encourage Louisvillians to get donned up for the inaugural Derby. She rode around town dressed to the nines and in an open carriage, to sway others to attend the event and look dabber at the same time. “Since that time, the [Derby’s] fashion tradition has developed quite naturally,” said Whitehead.
