DIY glory in Frock Olympics

Many Fashions on the Field finalists made their own outfits this year.

Many Fashions on the Field finalists made their own outfits this year.

CROWN Oaks was a day of vicious little winds and teasingly short blasts of sunshine, but in Flemington's Fashions on the Field enclosure, tan legs were invariably bare, frocks sleeveless or altogether strapless, and smiles determinedly radiant.

This was the Frock Olympics after all, the pinnacle Fashions on the Field event of spring's racing carnival and every woman worth her wobbly platform heels wasn't going to let a mere Arctic chill spoil the glamour - goosebumps or not.

''I did like this dress because I thought it would quiver in the wind, but now, I'm quivering in the wind,'' laughed Toorak lawyer Alex Foxcroft. She had just won the competition's Victorian final in an elegant melon pink silk sheath, its surface a field of thin silk noodles which did indeed wiggle and quiver as gently as marabou feathers; even more so as Foxcroft shivered. ''It's so good when the sun comes out.''

It didn't come out often, but rows and rows of beautifully dressed women queued in the cold, and took turns on the stage nonetheless, as if it were a sultry day in the tropics.

''I just really, really love fashion,'' said Angela Menz, 27, a retail manager and hobby milliner whose hand-made ensemble of magenta silk draped blouse, chartreuse skirt and orange straw gondola-shaped hat, dyed especially to match her shoes, won the Fashions on the Field grand final and its astonishing prize pool, including a Lexus sports car.

''This is the Holy Grail,'' she said of her win. ''My dad started bringing me to the races when I was a child and tried to get me interested in the horses, but that's not what I loved.''

She won her first Fashions on the Field at a tiny race meeting in Queanbeyan in 2003. ''I was hooked from that moment,'' she said. ''I love it because all this is so far removed from my real world.''

The entrants' queues were peppered with women citing the same fairytale reasons for being there. ''It's like the only place you can dream up a dress, make it, and then wear it without looking dumb,'' said one young enthusiast before being eliminated in the first round. ''I don't care. I just came for the goodie bag.''

Remarkably, almost every finalist in the day's seemingly endless series of preliminary, semi-final and final fashion parades had made her own outfit or mustered woman friends or relatives to help her.

''It's called 'Hitchcock's Birds','' Yasmin Maskiell, 31, a young homemaker and lawyer from Tasmania, said of her bird-patterned silk bubble frock. ''I designed it, then got a friend of mum's to do the hat.''

Young paralegal Amy Robson, 21, of Brisbane, had taken her first plane flight to model her grandmother's design, a sharp, sherbet orange and cream ensemble, chic as any Parisien couture, into the Fashions on the Field.

''My grandma found the hat first. She says, 'Come over and we'll make something to go with it','' Robson laughed. ''I was just stoked to be on the plane.''

She won the People's Choice award, and was first runner-up in the Victorian state final, a result that immediately lured a ring of earnest admirers as she left the fashion enclosure: ''You should have got first''; ''Yeah, I would have let you win''; ''You look stunning, really beautiful, you should have won''.

It didn't matter. Fashions on the Field, for most of its hundreds of entrants clenching against yesterday's cold, smiling though they yearned for that coat in the car, isn't about winning, it's about the girly camaraderie and weeks of intense preparation. It's about the frocks.