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The Grand National is the world's biggest horse race generating a global audience running into hundreds of millions. Now some of the attention is being focused on the 'fillies' watching the racing.
During the three-day Grand National Festival in Liverpool, one of the big highlights has become Ladies Day on the eve of the showcase steeplechase. The Jockey Club, owners of the famous Aintree course, is to issue style guide-lines for females who dress to impress on Ladies Day.
The camera lenses of tabloid newspapers zoom in on the outrageous and the ridiculous as they feature the more bizarre examples of fashion, Liverpool style.
Racecourse managers have insisted they are not turning into ' fashion police,', but the very idea of a style-guide and dress code has outraged a number of fashion commentators in Northern England.
'Ladies' Day Shocker as the Jockey Club plans Aintree dress code', screamed the front page of the leading newspaper in the city, the Liverpool Echo on its front page.
To rub salt into the wound, the Style Code is being drawn up by fashion experts based in London.
Ladies Day at the Grand National event has become famed for its parade of ostentatious hats, daring hats and impressive skin tans. It is in sharp contrast to the strictly-enforced Dress Code at Britain's other major event of the race calendar, Royal Ascot.
Rules in the 'Royal Enclosure' at Ascot demand formal attire, with dresses and skirts of modest length defined as falling just above the knee or longer. Strapless, off the shoulder, halter neck and spaghetti straps are not permitted, and no bare-skin in the midriff area is permitted. Similar rules are in place for the main grandstand areas away from the Royal Enclosure.
The followers of fashion at Royal Ascot in Berkshire and the Grand National in Liverpool, where there is plenty of bare flesh and low cleavages on show, are a million miles apart.
Liverool-based fashion consultant Joanne Watkinson said: "You can't dictate to people what they can and can't wear. Some national newspapers can be particularly offensive on Ladies Day, deliberately setting out to target certain women and poke fun at them, and that's just the worse form of snobbery."
She added the London style experts being consulted are also unlikely to understand the dress divide between northern and southern England.
"How dare they join together to govern what our girls wear," she added, citing a gathering of fashion gurus at a Jockey Club event in London where the proposed 'style guide' was discussed.
Race organizers say the dress code, which they stress is advice rather than rules, aim to inspire and enthuse guests to make the Grand National event the most stylish ever.
The course owners plan to appoint ambassadors to give advice on dress and style for Ladies Day.
Commenting on the style code, Jockey Club spokesman John Baker said: "We want racegoers to really embrace it and cement the Crabtree Grand National ladies Day as the best dressed event in the racing calendar."
Ladies Day at the Grand National is a relatively new feature of a race meeting dating back to 1839. The feature event, the Grand National, involves horses racing almost 7,200 meters over the world's most gruelling circuit. It is watched by around 600 million people in over 140 countries. It also generates Europe's biggest prize for the winner of a jump race in Europe, worth one million pounds.
It seems during the 2015 Grand National the attention will be on the winners of the fashion race among female racegoers.
