 ON WITH THE SHOW!" ... The Fashion Statement ... by Ron Hevener
I love paging through horse magazines. My studio is filled with stacks of dusty magazines essential to my work as an artist/writer because of the details they provide in my research for novels or new designs. You can't imagine the kind of information these magazines reveal about horses and the people who love them. Yes, it's the horses I look at first. But, after that, I always look at the rest of the picture.
Last month, we talked about how to get more publicity for horses; how to make them a more important part of life in a world that is changing its values very fast. This month, with that same purpose in mind, let's take a look at how we present ourselves to that bigger world. Let's look at fashion and what we can do about it!
No, this isn't Carson Kresley talking to you, although he does come from my home state of Pennsylvania and a lot of you might know him from the horse show world. No, this advice is coming from your friend, Ron Hevener, and the school of hard knocks.
For the sake of this commentary, and to make things more fun, let's not limit the idea of fashion to clothing. Selecting the right style, fit and coloring of your clothes is very important, but let's consider fashion in its broadest sense. Let's include our horses in the fashion statements we make! You know, if you throw in everything from your horse's pedigree to its nutrition, housing and grooming (Yes, these things change as fast as clothing styles do), you start to get an idea of how many ingredients go into the Fashion Statement formula.
And take it further: Consider the people presenting your horse in public. Think about the colors they wear as they stand beside your horse for a picture. Think of their show attire: It might be great for one horse they are presenting, but is it just as complimentary for a horse of another color? Does it look good on a Gray, for instance, but clash with a Chestnut? If you present your own horse in the show ring, that's one thing. But, if you hire a trainer to show your horse for you -- and they've got several different horses to show that day -- how's it going to make you feel if your horse doesn't look its best for the crowd? Worse yet, what if your horse wins and for the rest of your life you have to look at a horrible photo? Like they say, pictures say a thousand words -- so you want to be sure they're saying the right thing!
Every month, I try packing as much into these articles as I can. I want you to see how big and important your world is, and I want you to get a sense of how far you can go. I'm not a professor, just someone who was lucky enough to go pretty far in the fields of interest that I love. OK, maybe as the saying goes, 'luck' had nothing to do with it and it was all because I made the right choices. Wrong! I've made so many mistakes there aren't enough numbers to count them (OK, OK, Elaine Strich: I hear you on the Larry King Show, saying you don't have any regrets because everything turned out great) ... Maybe that's true in a high-minded philosophical kind of way. But, I'm not always so high-minded when it comes to this rocky road of life and if I can pave the way and make it easier for you, well, let me do it.
So, we're talking about the broadest elements of fashion as they affect horse lovers. You know, right now it's the trend to consider breeders of purebred animals to be designers of the matings they plan. That being said, if the world of purebred animals is influenced by popular opinion and preference (and we all know it is) then anyone can see where I'm going with this: The world of purebred animals is probably bigger than the world of Paris couturier. Probably bigger than the whole shebang of Paris, New York, South Beach and Milan combined.
Somewhere in one of my stories (I think it's a conversation between the high society dog breeder, Esmeralda von Havenberg, and her best friend, Blanche), there is a comment about all this. Esmeralda takes a picture from a London fashion magazine to the local dress shop and shows it to Blanche Jacobus, the saucy Blonde who wants to get to Hollywood and make it as a costume designer in the movies. Just between you and me, I think Blanche is stringing the customer along, but it doesn't take long for the savvy dressmaker to see a niche for herself in the show world of purebred animals and before you know it, Blanche' Creations is launched.
Recently, I attended a seminar about these things and I might as well have been seeing Blanche and Esmeralda in real life. I was fascinated by the wealth of information gathered by the two women who have built one of the most respected horse show attire businesses. I loved their seminar and their roster of speakers. One of the most interesting was a woman who talked with us about advertising and photography. These are things that all of us deal with when it comes to our sport; things which many of us don't fully understand. Part of this misunderstanding is because we think we're already supposed to know it all! Well, we're not always conscious of surrounding details when the center attraction is a horse. Most of us love horses so much that (when it comes to ads, press releases and articles) we forget about the rest of the picture. But, we shouldn't. We should consider every detail when presenting our horses (representatives of our sport) to the public. After all, this is show business you're in. And the public is your audience.
For the sake of this article, I'll call these women Blanche and Esmeralda. I have to tell you, they knew their business. By the time they were done with us, we had been outfitted from head to toe, and the personal fitness trainer they brought along took care of the rest.
Now, I'm telling you all this for your own good. In the world of showmanship, there is no sitting on your laurels. The minute you figure out something that works, your competition does it better. With fashion, I'm telling you once your eyes are opened there's no turning back.
Imagine this: It's a few months later and I'm at the Quentin Riding Club. Now, for those of you who don't know the Quentin Riding Club, let me just say it's probably the oldest horse show grounds east of the Mississippi. When they put on a show, it's a humdinger: anything can happen. Bristling tempers and clashing egos make for some of the funniest things you've ever seen and, for the life of me, I wonder sometimes how it all stays together. But, somehow it does. And somehow, when spring rolls around for another horse show season, the whole place takes on a romantic mood like the carnivals and country fairs we only read about or see in movies from long ago. That's the Quentin Riding Club. It was there that I saw it.
It was a class of about 10 horses ... Country English Pleasure, I believe. I had been dozing off to the peaceful sound of organ music when suddenly a class of furiously trotting Bays and Chestnuts caught my attention. You could see it in the stern faces of the riders. You could feel it in the air! Never mind that some of the riders couldn't have been out of their braces. This was business! This was war!
Every one of them looked like they had attended that seminar I went to. Hats! Make-up! Posture! It was perfect!
The crowd leaned forward. Sodas were put down. People looked at each other in amazement.
There - among the riders whirling and twirling as they trotted by; so close you could hear them clicking their tongues and urging their horses forward -- was one rider who stood out among the rest. She stood out as plain as the finest horse you would ever see. No more than twelve years old, she caught the attention of everyone in that crowd .... "Look at that!" someone whispered. "Can you believe it?"
Yes, I saw it. And I could believe it. And, before you knew it, everyone else in the grandstand could believe it, too. Because there before us -- at the walk, the trot, the canter -- was a rider brave enough, secure enough, good enough to wear (Dare I say it?) ... to wear not the tried and true gloves of black like everyone else in the class. No! This rider, defying all conventional wisdom, had taken her destiny into her own hands and dressed them in gloves of the purest, cleanest, most pristine white! Only a rider with nerves of steel would have risked drawing such attention to the steadiness of her hands in the show ring like that. Again and again, the riders circled the ring under those bright lights. Again and again, I saw the judge watching her. I clapped as loudly as everyone else when she won.
How many pairs of white gloves we'll see in the ring next time is anybody's guess. But, that's fashion for you, and that's how you make a statement.
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