Royal Ascot 2024: Best Dressed and Guests

Celebrities, horse racing fans, and regular British upper class folk are dusting off their hats and practicing hiding their cumbersome new giant hat elastics under their hair, because Royal Ascot 2024 is here.

The five-day event kicked off on Tuesday, June 18, with cigar smoke, sunshine, and a smile from King Charles. Members of the royal family were also in attendance, including Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who wore a cobalt blue look by Fiona Claire Couture; Princess Anne, who wore a red embroidered dress coat; Zara Tindall, who chose a lemon-hued Lola Green puff-sleeved dress with a gold flying saucer boater; and Princess Eugenie, who wore a mint green Diane von Furstenberg look.

Four months after the death of her husband, Tom Kingston, Dame Gabriella Kingston joined the procession. Wearing a floral-print Catherine Walker dress and a trendy Bottega Veneta clutch, she arrived in a carriage with the Princess Royal and Peter Phillips, and was greeted with a hug from Tindall in the parade ring.

The star spot on the first day was the Royal Enclosure's “Summer House.” After being dropped off by this year's “official chauffeur” Wheelie, guests mingled while enjoying free-flowing Moet. Rod Stewart's wife, Penny Lancaster, appeared holding a parasol made of fresh flowers, rubbing shoulders with footballer Theo Walcott and rapper Bugsy Malone.

London fashion designer Daniel W. Fletcher served as Royal Ascot's first-time creative director this year, filling the garden tables with dapper boys who put a playful twist on the traditional dress code. “We wanted to take a fresh approach to race attire. The Royal Ascot dress code will remain the same, but we wanted to explore how we could be most creative within it,” he said of the event's style guide.