The Royal Ascot pashmina

Flouting the Royal Enclosure dress code at Ascot is a mistake you’ll only ever make once, says Catherine Austen

INDIA is mortified. It’s her first visit to Royal Ascot, and the polite man at the entrance to the Royal Enclosure took one look at her bare shoulders and discreetly handed her a plain, cream pashmina.

“Don’t say ‘I told you so’,” she hisses at her mother, who knew from the moment India showed her the admittedly gorgeous floral body-constyle strapless frock she was planning to wear that this would happen. But what would an old woman like her know?

India’s hat is big, her heels are high and her figure is perfect. The Mail

Online photographers were snapping away as she sashayed into the racecourse. But rules are rules, and there are no bare shoulders in the Royal Enclosure.

Really, she shouldn’t be allowed in despite draping the pashmina over her bronzed shoulders, as the dress beneath is still supposed to conform to the dress code, but the gatemen are kindly.

Faced with either spending the day in the grandstand enclosure on her own and missing out on lunch in the Turf Club marquee or sucking it up and submitting to the pashmina, India covers up.

Her mother, elegantly attired in a duck-egg blue suit, tactfully hasn’t said a word. By the time the Royal Procession arrives, India is over her humiliation.

It’s a little life-lesson — just occasionally teenagers’ parents do know what they’re talking about.