There's one place where the hat matters more than the horse. Royal Ascot, Britain's most prestigious horse race, has for decades been less a sporting event and more an open-air runway - a stage where royal women and the aristocracy show off the most spectacular fascinators and hats of the year. Over the years, a handful of looks have been etched into history.

Kate Middleton is a regular icon of the lawn. From the white lace Dolce & Gabbana dress at her 2016 debut, through the powder-blue Elie Saab two-piece, to the red Alexander McQueen dress with a floral hat - every appearance of hers is a study in precision. In 2022 she wore diamond and pearl earrings that had belonged to Princess Diana, a detail that says more than any dress.

And Diana herself set the standard long before them. Her appearances from the eighties - white suits, the nautical cuts of Catherine Walker, the hats of Philip Somerville - still look contemporary today. When Meghan Markle debuted in 2018 in a Givenchy shirt dress, she made history as the first house to bring it into that circle. Nor has it gone unnoticed how much the gestures and absences at Ascot say as much as the clothes.

For a reader in the Balkans, this is a world that looks distant - a dress that costs as much as a year's salary, a hat worn once. And yet the appeal is the same everywhere: we don't watch these women because they look like us, but because they sell us a fantasy of a world without worries. Ascot is exactly that - a pretty illusion of sequins, feathers, and pearls, lasting precisely as long as one race.