No skirting the gender issue as racing fashion winner makes history

History was made at the 60-year-old Myer Fashions on the Field at Flemington on Thursday when one of the national winners was a man wearing a skirt – his own creation.

Sherlon Garbo, 31, was a popular winner of the inaugural best suited category, which replaced the anachronistic “best male” and “best female” categories that were a mainstay of the racewear fashion competition for decades.

Fashions on the Field best suited competition winner Sherlon Garbo (left), and in his winning entry in 2020. 

Garbo, a nurse from the Northern Territory, said it was thrilling to win the first year of the revamped competition. “Everyone can wear a suit, everyone can wear a skirt,” he said, adding he was inspired by Harry Styles, who frequently plays with gender ambiguity in his red-carpet looks, and Brad Pitt, who wore a skirt to the premiere of his film Bullet Train this year.

A winner of the digital COVID-era Fashions on Your Front Lawn competition in 2020, Garbo is no stranger to dressing up in the name of racing. But he said this year was harder knowing he was going to be up against women and non-binary entrants in the best suited category.

One of the judges and Victoria Racing Club ambassador Christian Wilkins declared the competition a huge success: “This feels like the future of racing fashion,” he said, after a week in which racing norms were regularly ditched and fashion stunts outshone true style at various times in the Birdcage.

Wearing a much more traditional outfit, though still a departure from the full-skirted looks that dominated the fashions competitions of old, best dressed winner Bernadette May confessed a “reject outfit” took her all the way from the Cup Day heats to the national final, in which she took home a new car, among other prizes.

“I was going to enter this outfit online but I showed my friends and none of them jumped up and down about it,” she said. “So I thought, I’ll wear it to Flemington but in the back of my head I didn’t think I had a chance.”

Bernadette May, a mother of four, took out the top title in the women’s category for Fashion on the Field.Credit: Eddie Jim

May, a mother of four children aged 22, 19, 6 and 1, from Geraldton in Western Australia, has entered the competition three times and been a finalist once. But her regular garb couldn’t be further from her winning combination of floral dress by Bambah and hat by Peacock Millinery.

“When I’m not doing this I have a flannel shirt on or active wear, and I don’t even work out,” she said.

Away from the competition precinct, the fashions were the strongest of the carnival, notwithstanding the abundance of hot pink around the Birdcage.

Model Nicole Trunfio arrived in a pink vintage Chanel suit once worn by the actress the late Elizabeth Taylor she bought at Christie’s for $US21,000 ($33,000). She said the look was a tribute to the late Karl Lagerfeld. “He was the one who discovered me and made my career. I hope he’d be happy.”

The best dressed on Oaks Day

Elle Baillieu, photographer/social identity

Wearing head-to-toe Gucci.

Credit: Eddie Jim

Nicole Trunfio, model

Wearing a vintage Chanel suit, headpiece by Melissa Jackson millinery made from offcuts from the skirt.

Credit: Eddie Jim

Jaimee Belle Kennedy, social identity

Wearing Tamara Ralph dress, Graff necklace.

Credit: Eddie Jim

Kate Waterhouse

Wearing Versace suit, Ezara J hat.

Credit: Eddie Jim

The reporter was a judge in the Myer Fashions on the Field.

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