Hats Off to These Winners

A positive profusion of creative and colorful tony tête toppers packed the stands and cabanas as the Santa Barbara Polo Club celebrated its 17th annual Ladies Day.

As usual I had the onerous task of judging the mélange of magnificent millinery, including the largest, most colorful and most creative, and the day couldn’t have been more perfect with the sun blazing, low humidity and glorious ocean breezes.

And the event, the Whittier Trust USPA Silver Cup Final pitting Grant Palmer’s Antelope team against Ben Soleimani’s Carbenalla players, couldn’t have been closer with the final chucker at 13-13.

The sudden death playoff resulted in Ben’s team hitting the winning goal, with the score at 14-13.

For the second time lawyer Lauren Wood, who moved from Santa Barbara to Woodland Hills, won the most creative hat category with a custom order she made on the website Etsy. “I just love wearing hats,” she explained. “They are always so elegant.”

Dana Beesen claimed the biggest hat, a homemade canopy of red roses. “I put it together in just two hours,” said the Los Angeles marketing and communications executive proudly.

Jenna Jobst, a local winemaker who studied millinery in the U.K. making fascinators, won for the most colorful hat, a fluffy concoction featuring a pink flamingo that certainly wasn’t for the birds!

And a last-minute children’s category was won by Era, 6, the daughter of the club’s resident photographer, who made her own hat for the occasion.