@2bayboys looks fabulous and neglects to mention, until prompted, that the mare got champion and reserve. You modest thing!
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Most people I’ve seen with brown boots have brown pretty much everything else too. But not all. Black and brown in the right shade can look really lovely together.
Brown tack/helmet/coat/boots/etc on a chestnut is SO beautiful to me. I have a bay so it wouldn’t have quite the same impact, and also would be an awfully big expense at this point haha.
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I know I’m probably really late to this but I can’t afford a 3’6" horse. I have the lady balls to ride it, I’ve popped friend’s horses over it, but there’s zero chance I can spend 6 figures on that. So I’ll be happy with 2’9". Not because that’s where I top out but that’s because a 3’6" horse that jumps with style is many many zeros that are out of budget. Yeah maybe I could buy a 2/3 yo and pray, but I’m really past the age of wanting to sit on the antics as they figure it out.
Up thread someone mentioned 6 figures for a saintly 2’6" horse, and that’s 100% a thing. I don’t even care about winning, I know what I want to work on and what I want to accomplish and I don’t need ribbons to validate it, but I also am not gonna take a clear non-starter into a division. So here I’ll sit at the low levels.
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She makes me miss my Rosey
and there were rust breeches and a hunter green coat in those pics!
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those new boots are incredible. I first saw them about 10 years ago at US Arab Nationals
Nope.
Fifty plus years ago-
- Field boots were brown, and were “informal”. Fine for cubbing and schooling, but NOT suitable for hunting after opening meet, or for showing.
- Dress boots were black, and were formal. Suitable for hunting after opening meet, and for showing.
- There was no distinction between men and women. The only place gender came in was in the hunt field, with riders who had “earned their colors”. In that case, women wore black patent tops on their dress boots, and men wore brown tops on their dress boots.
- Black field boots didn’t exist (and when they appeared on some of the show hunters, were considered anathema by the purists)
(Edited in response to CBoylen’s correction)
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This is backwards.
And yes, brown boots are still made and worn for cubbing or informal days.
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Thanks. I fixed it.
I looovee brown boots, which is a little weird for a dressage rider, I know!
But I have a short calf, so I’m pretty limited in my boot choice. (Though I see these do come in short. Hmmm…)
I do sort of which they’d stop making boots with laces. With zippers, they are unnecessary. Field boots are usually all I can find in my size, and the laces are so hard to clean.
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On informal days you may still wear brown boots hunting. Many hunts have informal days and formal days after Opening so they are still worn
Hello, Photoshop!
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Wait. Cleaning laces?!
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Are crochet gloves “out?” I’ve never stopped using them 
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You can still wear all of those things in the hunt field.
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I rode in a Lucinda Green clinic ages ago, and she told us to get a pensioner to crochet us some string gloves without the leather palms and fingers that the store-bought ones had. Because she had famously lost a big event due to slippery gloves.
I was sad that I didn’t know any glove-crocheting pensioners. Although I might be able to find a hipster to do it.
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@awaywego, when I was young, an elderly couple boarded at the stable where I rode. They gave each other “dressage lessons” on their poor saint of a horse. And let me tell you: They were flipping bonkers. They had no idea what they were doing – to such a degree that even I, a know-nothing 13-year-old, could tell they were just assclowning it around. My coach – who ultimately went on to Prix St. Georges – gently tried to guide them. That didn’t go over real well.
The male of the couple always showed up in this get-up that I swear was vintage European cavalry. He adopted the persona, too, of a commander surveying his mounted troops. When they (the couple, not the troops) pulled down the driveway, everyone cleared out of the arenas to 1) observe the madness and 2) stay the heck out of their way.
ANYWAY: I suspect that in my hunter-green full chaps and soon-to-be-repaired crochet gloves, I’m about to become my new barn’s female version of that guy. And just like him, I. Will. Own. It.
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You can also buy these, as they are still proper foxhunting attire and sidesaddle appointment. No hipsters required.
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My problem isn’t where to wear them, it’s that I only own the gloves of that ensemble 
. I’ll work on it tho
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Yes gurl!!
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