Did the Princess of Wales Dictate Ascot's Palette?

Ascot has gone more than three centuries without feeling the need to name an official colour. This year, it finally did. The Royal Ascot Handbook, unveiled back in April and rebranded from what used to be the more modest Lookbook, named its first ever Colour of the Year: Bright Tomato. A vivid orange-red, described by creative director Daniel Fletcher simply as the shade of a ripe tomato, with no hex code attached and no further instructions beyond an invitation to be bold.

What makes the choice worth a second look is not the colour itself but what it resembles. The shade sits remarkably close to a red Alexander McQueen dress worn by the Princess of Wales to her last appearance at the meeting, in 2023. Ascot's own explanation points elsewhere, to trend forecasting and the spring runways, where the same orange-red turned up at Chanel, Celine and Stella McCartney among others. Both things can be true. Royal style has a habit of anticipating fashion as often as it follows it.

This is, on reflection, a rather British way of handling the question. Nobody at Ascot has suggested the Princess set the palette for the season. Nobody needs to. The resemblance simply sits there, available to anyone inclined to draw the connection, and entirely deniable to anyone who'd rather not. It is the institutional equivalent of a knowing look exchanged across a dinner table, the kind of thing everyone present understood perfectly well without a word being said.

Whether the colour was chosen with her in mind or merely happens to echo something she once wore particularly well, the practical effect is the same. An entire season of dressmakers, milliners and racegoers are now calibrating themselves against a dress from three years ago, whether they realise it or not. There are less elegant ways to run a fashion campaign, and Ascot, fronted this year by supermodel Erin O'Connor, seems entirely aware of the fact.

Gold Cup Day, Thursday 18 June, will be the proper test. Tomato red, or something close enough to pass, should be everywhere in the Royal Enclosure by lunchtime. Whether anyone admits the reasoning out loud is, naturally, a separate matter.