Looking back over the repeated royal hats we saw worn at Royal Ascot this year, there was one design that stood out as your favourite by far:
Crown Princess Mary in a Jane Taylor vertical gold straw disc saucer with silk flower and feather trim worn on Day 2
The race for favourite new design worn at the races this year was not so cut and dried and, for the first time ever on Royal Hats, we have a four-way draw:
Princess Eugenie’s pale pink lattice picture hat with feathers by Jess Collett worn on Day 3
Zara Tindall’s electric blue percher with yellow quills by Rosie Olivia worn on Day 1
Princess Beatrice’s navy saucer disc hat with silk orchids by Gina Foster worn on Day 5
Princess Eugenie’s black mushroom picture hat with pearls by Nerida Fraiman worn on Day 5
Each of these five hats will be put forward into our poll for best new and repeated hats of 2016 at the end of the year. Jump over to the bottom of the original poll posts (new hats here and repeated hats here) to look at the results in greater detail.
Stay tuned later this week where we’ll face off our favourite designs worn during Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday celebrations last month. There are some beauties and I suspect we’ll have another close race!
Photos from Danny Martindale, Chris Jackson, Mark Cuthbert, Max Mumby/Indigo and Mark Cuthbert via Getty
Royal Hats 
Well while Zara’s amazing hat is quintessentially Zara, not so for Beatrice and Eugenie whose hats were wonderfully different from their usual percher styles, better still, they are beautiful, amazing, flattering, actual hats! It was amazing to see just how spoilt for choice we were with these four hats and how well they suited their wearers. Even more lovely that the winners were all HM Granddaughters.
I, too, am glad to see that the York girls are getting some love. They looked very good throughout Ascot. And while I like a good percher, I am delighted to see some larger brimmed hats appearing, as well. They seem to flatter lots of women, and somehow they always seem to make more of a splash–a large hat announces THIS IS AN OCCASION!
Good to see the Yorks getting some hat love after a fair bit of flak lately. These were good hats for them, and a blessed relief from perches, both girls suit bigger brims. A shame not to see Sophie in the top this time round, it really wasn’t her best Ascot this year…
A 4 way tie for best new hat! That’s awesome!
More like a statistical anomaly!