What men actually wear to Royal Ascot, enclosure by enclosure
In the Royal Enclosure a man wears black or grey morning dress with a waistcoat and tie, plus a black or grey top hat. In the Queen Anne Enclosure and the Village Enclosure the published requirement is simpler: a full length suit with a collared shirt and tie. A straw fedora, however fine it is, has no place in the Royal Enclosure, so buy one for the days when it earns its keep.
Ascot reviews its dress code and publishes the wording for each year, so read the current version before you order or hire anything. What follows is the shape of it, along with the decisions that sit behind the code: hire or buy, black coat or grey, what to do when the day is hot and where a straw hat genuinely belongs.
What is the men's dress code in the Royal Enclosure?
Morning dress, in full. That means a morning coat in black or grey, cut away at the front and falling to tails at the back, worn with a waistcoat and formal trousers, a collared shirt and a tie. The hat is specified too: a top hat, in black or grey. Nothing on that list is optional.
Two details catch men out. The waistcoat and the tie are both named in the code, so an open shirt under the coat will not pass at the gate. And the top hat belongs to the outfit, so it needs to fit properly and suit your face well before the morning of the race.
If you are dressing alongside someone, the women's Royal Enclosure code asks for a hat or headpiece with a solid base of at least 10cm in diameter, which rules out a slim band on that particular day. A pillbox or any shape with a proper crown answers it, and the sensible habit is to check the base measurement of a piece before you commit to it. Start in the Royal Ascot collection.
Why is a straw fedora wrong for the Royal Enclosure?
Because the code names one hat and a fedora is a different hat. A fedora has a soft crown with a lengthwise crease, pinches at the front and a brim that can be snapped down. It was built for daywear and it reads that way in felt, more so again in straw. Morning dress is a fixed formal uniform that the top hat completes; change the hat and the whole outfit loses its logic, in the way a dinner jacket loses its logic with brown shoes.
This is worth saying plainly, because straw hats are sold hard every June and race week photography blurs the enclosures together. A beautiful cream straw you see in a crowd shot may well be a fine hat, worn correctly, in an enclosure with a completely different code.
What do men wear in the Queen Anne Enclosure and the Village Enclosure?
A full length suit with a collared shirt and a tie. Full length means the trousers reach the shoe and the jacket matches them, so separates and anything cut short are out. Past that you have room: navy, mid grey, stone and summer-weight checks all work, and the tie can carry some colour.
Nobody will stop you here for a bare head, which is exactly the situation a fine straw fedora was made for. The cream parasisal fedora at GBP 480 sits with navy, mid grey and stone linen without any thought at all. The emerald green parasisal at GBP 450 is the stronger statement and wants a quiet suit and a plain tie beneath it. One loud element per outfit is the discipline that keeps a man looking deliberate.
Parasisal is worth understanding if you are spending this much. It is a fine, tightly woven straw, light in the hand, blocked over wood with steam and then stiffened so it holds a crisp brim edge through a long afternoon and a warm car. It behaves nothing like the soft, floppy straw sold cheaply for summer, which collapses the first time it is packed.
Should you hire a top hat or buy one?
Hire if Ascot is a rare invitation and you do not already own morning dress. The hire house fits the suit and the hat together, sizing is settled in the room and the whole outfit goes back at the end of the hire.
Buy if you expect several formal summers, or if weddings are coming. Three things to know first. Wool top hats are cheap and look it, with a flat, dull surface that shines where it is handled. Fur felt and melusine hold a deep nap and photograph properly. Antique silk plush is the traditional article and it is no longer produced, so silk toppers come to market secondhand, good sizes are scarce and rain is its enemy.
Whichever route you take, measure your head first. Run a tape around the head about a centimetre above the ears and across the middle of the forehead, keep it level the whole way round and read it in centimetres. That number is your size, and it is the same number on our listings, so a fedora given as 57 to 59cm covers a 58cm head. A hat slightly too small perches and looks comic in photographs; one slightly too large drops to the ears the moment you turn your head.
What colour morning coat, waistcoat and tie should you choose?
Black and grey are both permitted and they read differently. A black morning coat with grey striped trousers is the more formal register and the safer choice for the Royal Enclosure. A grey morning suit, coat and trousers cut from the same cloth, is lighter and sits well under a June sky. Match the top hat to the coat: black hat with the black coat, grey with the grey.
The waistcoat is where colour lives. Buff, dove grey, pale blue and soft yellow are all long-standing choices, single or double breasted. For the tie, woven silk in one colour or a small repeating pattern will outlast anything novelty and it leaves the waistcoat room to do the work. Keep the shirt plain, with a collar that holds its shape in heat.
What do you do if the day is hot?
Choose cloth for the weather. Sweating through a winter-weight coat in June is a decision you make in the fitting room, months earlier, and it is easily avoided:
- A morning coat in a lighter worsted, with a waistcoat in a lighter cloth to match.
- A cotton poplin shirt, which breathes and keeps its collar.
- A hat that fits. Pressure at the temples is what makes a top hat unbearable by three in the afternoon.
- Carry the hat to the gate. Keep it out of a hot car window and off your head until you arrive.
Check the current year's published wording before you rely on what someone did last season, since the code is reviewed each year. In the enclosures where straw is allowed the advantage is genuine: parasisal is light, the weave lets air move and the brim shades your eyes for hours.
Where is a fine straw fedora exactly right?
Wimbledon, garden parties, race days with a relaxed code and summer weddings where morning dress is not called for. It is right at a long lunch, on a boat, on holiday and on any day in strong sun when you want your face shaded and your outfit finished. Both parasisal fedoras are unisex, and either can be commissioned in another colour, since nothing here is made twice. The full range sits in the men's collection, and the men's hat guide covers shapes, sizing and how each one wears.
Every piece is blocked and finished by hand in the London atelier by Monika Perlinska. She qualified at a school of millinery in Poland and refined her craft in an atelier with a century of tradition, then spent five years in Philip Treacy's atelier, where she made hats for the royal family and for names from film and music, becoming his principal designer. Seven years as head milliner at Jane Taylor followed. That is around thirty-five years at the craft in total. If you want a hat cut for your head and your summer, in a colour that belongs to you, start a commission. Fittings take place in the London atelier, or by video call for clients abroad, and delivery within the United Kingdom is complimentary.
