HORSE SENSE While certain global brands nod to equestrianism, polo’s official body, Hurlingham Polo Association, has gone and launched a fully-fledged fashion and lifestyle label and it’s taking the horsey world by storm, says JULIA ROBSON
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icky France-Lynch was moody, macho and magnificent... he had a large crumbling estate and a nine-goal polo handicap... writes Jilly Cooper in her bestselling chick-lit book, Polo, the third (and raunchiest) of her Rutshire Chronicles, which first put equestrian fashion on the style radar back in the late 1980s. What began with Cooper’s Riders in 1985 – with its iconic cover of a male hand squeezing a pert female bottom – whet the appetite for an exposé into the glitzy lifestyles of polo folk, with their polished ponies, lean-bodied players and, of course, their expensive wardrobes. It ended with the compulsory wearing of (tight) white trousers, known as polo whites, both off and on the field, with Princess Diana and Elizabeth Hurley leading the charge. Once again polo fever is on the rise. This time it’s no longer considered just a rich man’s sport or even a sport for men only. Last November, 250 million people in 103 countries tuned
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