Spectator clothing is different from riding equipment
This guide covers equestrian-inspired fashion for the spectator, country visitor and everyday wardrobe. A garment described as a riding-style jacket or printed with snaffles is not proof of protective or technical riding performance.
- Horse-trials walk: comfortable footwear, trousers you can move in, a removable layer and weather protection.
- Racecourse visit: check the event and enclosure, then build the shirt and tailoring around its rules.
- Country lunch: an equestrian motif with plain trousers and a jacket can supply the reference without a functional riding outfit.
Check the sleeves and shoulders while reaching forward, and test the jacket seated over the shirt. A longer riding-inspired silhouette needs enough room at the hips, especially when buttoned.
The September 2026 calendar entries below are archived dates. Verify a new event independently. If you are actually riding, choose appropriate certified protection and equipment specified by your riding provider; this fashion edit does not replace that equipment.
Continue reading: What to Wear to the Races: The Complete Women's Guide (2026) · The Tailoring Room: The Complete Guide to Women's Jackets · Goodwood Revival 2026: A Woman's Guide to Dressing the Decades.
Explore women’s country-inspired jackets. Check the product page for the current fabric, measurements, price and available sizes.
Explore women’s style guides in the Claudio Lugli journal.
La Signora — The Country Set
The Equestrienne
A woman's wardrobe from Burghley to Cheltenham
Defender Burghley Horse Trials: 3–6 September 2026 · then the jumps season begins
When the flat season takes its bow at the end of summer, British style does something quietly wonderful: it moves to the country. Burghley in the first week of September, the autumn county shows, then the long build to Cheltenham — a calendar that has dressed some of the most photographed women in Britain without a single red carpet. The equestrienne wardrobe is having its moment again (equestrian-inspired silhouettes appear across fashion styling), but it was never really away. Here is how Claudio Lugli does it: heritage shapes, insurgent prints.
“Heritage shapes. Insurgent prints. That is the whole philosophy.”
The Riding Jacket, Reconsidered
Start with the silhouette the whole look hangs from. The Heritage Herringbone Riding jacket is cut long through the body with a flared skirt to the hem — the line of a show-ring coat, in an English herringbone that means it works over jeans at the horse trials and over a black dress in town. Its sister, the California Dogtooth, sharpens the same idea into a bolder check. These are the pieces that make the rest of the outfit look intentional.
The Prints of the Paddock
Underneath, the shirt carries the wit. The Snaffle Tie Dye takes the classic bit motif and pulls it through watercolour; the Ornate Horseshoe reads as a lucky charm at conversation distance and pure geometry across a field. For Burghley itself — four days of dressage, cross-country and shopping villages — the Elizabeth Horse Check layers horses over a heritage check so that two English languages speak at once. And the Galloping Horses print is for the woman who has decided that subtlety is for spectators.
Country, Not Costume
The field-sports seam runs deeper than horses. The Flying Pheasant print — game birds mid-flight across satin cotton — belongs at a shoot lunch or a market-town Saturday alike, and the pheasant family is the range's best-kept secret at £35 entry. The trick with country prints is the same as the city rule inverted: keep the setting quiet and let the print be the anecdote. Waxed jacket, dark denim, boots — and a shirt with a story.
The Calendar to Dress For
3–6 September: Defender Burghley Horse Trials — riding jacket over the Snaffle Tie Dye, boots you can walk a cross-country course in. 18–20 September: Goodwood Revival, which is its own universe entirely — we dress it decade by decade here. November into spring: the jumps season, Cheltenham's November Meeting through to the Festival — where the herringbone earns its keep and the horseshoe print becomes genuinely useful superstition. For the racing summer behind us, start with Ladies' Day at Glorious Goodwood.
Riding jackets · double-breasted tailoring · the herringbone family
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a woman wear to the races?
What is an equestrian print shirt?
What do you wear to Cheltenham, Goodwood or Ascot as a woman?
