Yvette Jelfs: Edinburgh Millinery Courses

The Yvette Jelfs courses are held at St. Ann's Bank House, just 10 minutes from Princess Street in the heart of Edinburgh. . Built in 1710, it was originally the farmhouse for The Palace of Hollyrood House. With extensive gardens and spacious workroom, it is the perfect location for learning how to style and dress in a relaxed and inspiring environment. A truly bespoke service awaits you as you learn the art of styling. Courses start at £150 a day and students will learn their own individual style of what and whatnot to wear. You can find out about styling for events such as racing, weddings and garden parties and, of course, any other event where hats and head dressings are a must! The day will begin at 10am, after a welcome greeting and a cup of tea or coffee we will sit down and discus the function you are wanting to attend and what is normally worn at such an occasion. We have Official Guides to all the seasons locations, which will help first time attendees, see how people dress for such functions. Then by showing different colours and styles we can show the client what suits their skin-tone and body shape in order to give them confidence and elegance for their special day. At a suitable time a light lunch with wine or champagne will be taken in the vine conservatory to make the day extra special. The most important thing for us is to see the client going away happy and confident in knowing what she is wearing does not bar them from the function they are attending, and having something that no one else is going to wearing or to upstage their hosts. Yvette has styled many celebrities for various functions including Linda Barker who asked Yvette for her superior knowledge on what to wear for Ladies Day at Royal Ascot. This day will offer you an opportunity to create an individual and unique look to suit your every occasion. We will help you understand how to get the most out of making an impact. There is no greater compliment than a person telling you how wonderful you look.

Yvette Jelfs: Edinburgh Millinery Courses

A Race through Fashion by Yvette Jelfs The first time I went to Royal Ascot was the summer of 1986. I was dazzled by the panoply of colour and sheer style and energy that paraded the enclosure. The women and their clothes were as exciting to watch as the dazzling line up in the paddock. No wonder Gold Cup day is known as Ladies Day; the fashion dominates the scene and is the canvas against which the racing is set. Royal Ascot has always reflected and often defined the fashion of the times, but how has a racecourse evolved into a catwalk? Having now been attending for nearly 20 years I think I am closer to understanding why this particular sporting event should have become so intrinsically linked with fashion. It all comes back to our love of rules: both of following them and breaking them. You see Royal Ascot has a dress code. Imagine Royal Ascot without a code of dress? Where would be the challenge? We would resort to practical clothing and it would become just another racing week. The rules set this event aside and put us on our mettle to dress within those very same rules in as chic or outlandish a manner as possible. One of the defining rules has always been that heads must be covered. As Royal Ascot has discovered this is a rule very open to interpretation. I have seen hats with racecourses in miniature around the brim, a hat formed as a giant poppy and a hat disguised as a plate of fried breakfast! Gertrude Shilling epitomised this exuberance in the late sixties and early 70's. Some of the David Shilling creations she wore included a hat decorated with a hamper of strawberries and champagne glasses, a hat shaped as a piano keyboard and even a hat concealed beneath a giraffe! Looking through Royal Ascot's photographic history you can see first hand the evolution of the best, and worst, of fashion over the last half century. This is the ultimate forum for fashion and it was here that people found out what worked off the catwalk, and what didn't. In 1950's Hardy Amies, Coco Chanel and Norman Hartnell were dressing women with inimitable elegance and style. Tailored dresses and suits and smart tweed and wool coats were to be seen on the best dressed at Royal Ascot. Hemlines were well below the knee and there was a truly ladylike feel to the clothes worn at Ascot. This was also the age of accessories: a fur stole might be draped over the shoulder, strings of pearls were a popular jewellery choice, gloves were de rigeur and the look was finished with softly shaped little hats with discreet amounts of veiling. A look that has recently started to re-emerge in our own wardrobes with the revival of vintage styles. As you flick through the photographs you can see the restrained elegance of the 50's start to fray before the youthful exuberance of the swinging sixties. Rising hemlines, pill box hats, little shift dresses and bare arms make their presence known for the first time at the racecourse, reflecting the changes in taste and fashion. The modern generation arrived at the gates of the Ascot in satins, silks and patterns, shunning the more conservative fabrics and styles of the previous decade and embracing the edicts of Vogue and the style of Jackie Kennedy. Look around you now and you will see the best of these two decades reincarnated in today's fashions. Smart coats in satins and luscious tweeds with neat collars and large buttons. Shift dresses with pockets jauntily sewn onto the front. Alongside these are the pretty printed chiffons and flirty georgette dresses that might have graced the Royal Enclosure 50 years ago. The rule about covering your head still stands, but now it might be a headpiece of stripped heckle or luscious coq feathers that catches the eye. But the influences of Ascot fashion don't stop with Jackie Kennedy and the 60's. The 1970's saw their own share of intriguing, and occasionally dreadful, fashion trends strolling the racecourse. The Royal Enclosure took a deep breath and welcomed beehives, kaftans, knee length plastic boots and ever shortening dresses in the new nylons and rayons printed with the fashionable computerised designs and geometrical patterns. As ever, it was the younger set who introduced these new looks to the racecourse. The traditionalists, still in their smart suits and practical heels muttered about anarchy and dress codes and turned the other cheek. The first part of the 1980's saw a new fashion shoulder its way, quite literally, into Royal Ascot. This was the era of Dallas, Power Dressing and the women executives and fashion in the Royal Enclosure reflected this. Shoulder pads, stark colouring and quilted Chanel shoulder bags were de rigeur and Frederick Fox, Philip Treacy and David Shilling were on their mettle and produced ravishing sculptured confections that broke new ground in millinery design. By the 1990's fashion was becoming more eclectic. No longer was a look so definable. Designers and Racegoers were looking to a wealth of sources for their inspiration. Suits, Dresses, Hairpieces, Trouser Suits, they all appeared in the Royal Enclosure. The only constant was the gentlemen's Morning Suits and Top Hats. The imagination of the milliners knew no bounds and hats evolved into works of art. They may have been required for etiquette originally but hats and headpieces have become the modern standard bearers for fashion at the races. Now, more than ever, I am excited about what I might see at Royal Ascot. A vintage 1940's dress with a bandeau of feathers? A slick trouser suit with impossibly high heels and a rakish Stephen Jones top hat? An homage a Jackie, complete with pill box and dark glasses? A printed floaty dress with a shawl for those light breezes and a soft, beret style hat? Or something completely new that has not yet impinged on the consciousness as a new fashion? Every year Royal Ascot produces fashion successes and faux pas, visual delights and ground breaking designs, all presented with vivacity and verve. The newspapers will be full of photographs of the famous and the unknown dressed to thrill the crowd and themselves. At Royal Ascot, fashion has found purpose.

Yvette Jelfs: Edinburgh Millinery Courses

Dressing for Royal Ascot High Street Chic - £150 The final stop for Yvette is the Top Shop flagship store at Oxford Circus where she is meeting Georgina Jelfs, a former three-day eventer who shares Yvette's passion for racing. Georgina will be attending the Royal Meeting with a group of friends in the Grandstand Enclosure and wants to make a splash on the day, without having to spend too much. She has a budget of £150 and has seconded Yvette to help her shop. It can be impossible to find something different and unique at High Street prices she worries, here are lovely things out there but not necessarily with that 'je ne sais quoi' that makes them exciting to wear at an event like Royal Ascot. I really want to avoid buying a suit or something too tailored as that feels too much like work clothes, I want to wear something different that is fresh and unusual. "Top Shop offer an excellent choice for someone like Georgina",says Yvette "Their customers are generally from the younger end of the market, a group which can be intensely fashion conscious and despite a limited budget they want to capture this seasons look. They are happy to buy a piece that might last for just a season because next year they'll be updating again so everything here is up to the minute".

Yvette Jelfs: Edinburgh Millinery Courses

Dressing for Royal Ascot Department Store Delights - £500 Leaving a blissfully happy Jane to make her way back to work, Yvette moves on to Harvey Nichols to meet Deirdre Johnston, wife of the Middleham trainer, Mark Johnston. With around 200 horses in the yard and over 100 staff Deirdre is committed to every day of the Flat racing calendar. "My great difficulty" explains Deirdre, "Is time. When we aren't racing then I am riding out, or with our boys, Angus 10 and Charlie 14, none of which leaves much time for shopping!". For Deirdre, Royal Ascot is very much a working event as she will be saddling up horses before races, as well as meeting with the jockeys and owners. With their string of winners, Deirdre also makes frequent trips to the winners enclosure, so the right clothes are vital. Deirdre takes eight suits to Royal Ascot and has been known to send her hats ahead in the horsebox. They take up so much room she laughs. Mark only has to bring his morning suit and some spare shirts but packing for me can be a military process. Despite her frantic schedule Deirdre is renowned for her wonderful clothes, wearing a show stopping top hat

Yvette Jelfs: Edinburgh Millinery Courses

Dressing for Royal Ascot Boutique Dressing - £1,000 Dressing for Ascot is a process that we all look forward to before we actually go shopping. Unfortunately, as all too many of us can testify, shopping for an event like Royal Ascot can end up being a major challenge involving weeks and sometimes months trailing round endless shops looking for something that fits, that suits you and that is appropriate for the occasion. Despite the well held belief that all women love shopping finding the perfect outfit can be a traumatic and frustrating experience that all too many of us end up dreading. Few of us have the time or the enthusiasm to scour the shops for months beforehand looking for the perfect outfit and none of us are forearmed with a weather report so that we know what we are actually going to be dressing for. In addition there is a dress code to be followed and the secret worry that you may arrive wearing the exact same thing as the woman picnicking next door to you. Magazines and television programmes inundate us with choice and turn the pressure up to look unique, beautiful and effortlessly chic. But with busy working lives and too much to choose from, where do you start? There is hope out there. Boutiques, department stores and even the high street can all offer something to suit you and your wallet. Yvette Jelfs, the Edinburgh Milliner