Irish Independent: Inside Royal Ascot: Irish stylist Sarah Kate Byrne
From Carlow to Ascot: The Woman Dressing Racing's Biggest Stars
The weather app is open again. Irish stylist Sarah Kate Byrne is refreshing it for what feels like the hundredth time this week, watching pressure systems drift across the British Isles with the focused intensity most people reserve for tracking flights. Royal Ascot is approaching and she has already prepared contingency plans for her contingency plans.
"By the time most people are starting to think about what they might wear, I'm already ten race meetings deep," she says, laughing. "Newmarket, York, Chester — they're all running simultaneously in my head. And then before I've caught my breath after Ascot's five-day marathon, Goodwood is on the horizon."
This is simply the tempo of the racing calendar. For the rest of us, it sounds both thrilling and exhausting.
Byrne is best known for her long-standing partnership with ITV Racing presenter Francesca Cumani, a relationship built over more than a decade that has taken her from the muddy reality of Cheltenham's festival week to the white-gloved formality of Royal Ascot's Royal Enclosure. She also works with Sky Sports Racing presenter Alex Hammond, and commercial clients including The Jockey Club, Goodwood, Jaguar Land Rover and Ascot itself. Hers is a niche world where fashion, television and thoroughbred horses collide, and she navigates it with the calm of someone who has spent her whole life at the intersection of all three.
From Tullow, Co Carlow, she already has decades of horsemanship under her belt. "I've been riding since I was four," she says. "Growing up beside my grandfather's stud farm means you come at this world from the inside. You understand it differently."
That grounding matters more than it might seem. Dressing a television presenter who is standing trackside for eight hours, in unpredictable weather, on live broadcast, is an entirely different proposition from dressing someone for a lunch or a red carpet. The clothes have to last, move freely and hold up across a long shift.
"Dressing for television is a completely different discipline," Byrne explains. "You're dealing with changing light all day, cameras picking up every single detail, and conditions that nobody can actually predict. Something might look incredible at ten in the morning and be completely wrong by three in the afternoon."
Her Ascot preparations illustrate this perfectly. The ITV team broadcasts across all five days and over 250,000 people pass through the Berkshire racecourse across race week, meaning Byrne is coordinating multiple outfits, organising returns, managing designer loans and quietly stress-testing every look against a rolling forecast. She has stories to tell, and most of them involve the weather.
"We've had Ascots that hit 36 degrees, which brings its own chaos," she says. "And then another year, I was running around trying to track down a pair of wellington boots for Francesca because the ground in the Parade Ring was completely waterlogged. One year we wore thermals underneath our dresses." She pauses. "The thermals didn't make it into the photographs, thank God, but the borrowed wellington boots actually did! Francesca was filmed in them."
Byrne is the first to admit that behind the scenes bears little resemblance to the vision people have in mind when they think about high-society race meetings and immaculate broadcasters.
"People imagine it's pure glamour, which some of my job is. But it's part stylist, part project manager, and part problem-solver. You're constantly adapting, pinning, adjusting, pivoting. Nothing is ever completely settled until it's done."
Her visual instincts were formed early, and not only through horses. Her parents ran an architectural salvage business, and Byrne grew up surrounded by antiques, restoration work and old craftsmanship.
"That definitely shaped the way I see things," she says. "I've always been drawn to strong silhouettes, proper tailoring, things that are built to last. I grew up with beautiful old objects around me and I think that made me allergic to anything disposable or cheap-looking."
It's an aesthetic that runs directly through her work. Byrne is known for championing independent designers and Irish labels. Earlier this year, Cumani wore a Donegal tweed suit by Banshee of Savile Row at Newmarket, one of several quiet moments where Byrne has put Irish craft on one of racing's biggest stages. She is equally devoted to independent milliners, working with a roster that takes in Jess Collet — famed for creating Princess Catherine's coronation tiara — Carol Kennedy, and Ireland’s Martha Lynn and poster boy Philip Treacy.
"The hat comes first a lot of the time, but not always," she says. "It affects proportion, balance, posture — everything needs to flow. People treat it as an afterthought and leave it to the end, but it should really be one of the very first decisions you make. I'll often ask a client what their day will entail, because a box invitation might demand a less fulsome hat. You don't want to be bashing your lunch companions with your brim."
At different race meetings, the codes shift entirely. Cheltenham demands practicality, and she is unapologetic about tweed's functional appeal as much as its heritage. "Ascot requires a different level of finish, more architectural, more considered. And Goodwood," she says, with a smile, "allows me have more fun with the fashion choices. We can experiment a bit more."
The Royal Enclosure's dress code still produces surprises, even for seasoned racegoers. "A very low-cut top is absolutely fine, with the rules calling for two straps of at least one inch in width. Go an inch or two above the knee, though, and suddenly there's an issue. I've seen women being asked to buy petticoats on the day." She is not dismissive of the rules, though. "Once you understand them, they actually give you direction. You're working within a clear framework and that can be quite liberating."
Within that framework, Byrne's instinct is geared toward clothes that will hold up practically, visually, on camera. When asked about the highlights of Ascot season, she lights up immediately. "I've had private clients from the USA who trusted me to style them remotely, and then their runners went on to win. Pure magic."
Her parting advice for anyone attending? "Get your footwear right. It's a long day, mainly on grass, so I favour a block heel. And always talc your feet to stave off blisters — that's a trick I learned from Francesca."
The irony is not lost on her that with so much creative energy going into dressing other people, her own outfit for race day is, by her own admission, reliably the last thing she sorts out.
"I usually end up cobbling something together from whatever's left," she says, entirely unbothered. "That's just how it is.”
By which point, knowing Ascot, the forecast will have changed anyway.
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