Fashion and Horses: The Grand Prix de Paris

Every June, the Bois de Boulogne lost its mind. Not gradually. All at once. The Grand Prix de Paris — France’s most glamorous, most crowded, most hotly anticipated racing event — was, officially, a horse race. The horses ran. The horses were timed. A horse won. But if you think that is what the 150,000 people packed into the Hippodrome de Longchamp on a June Sunday were there to see, you have fundamentally misunderstood the nineteenth century. An Emperor, a Duke, and an Extremely Large Prize Longchamp racecourse opened in April 1857 — with Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie in attendance, having arrived, as one does, by private yacht along the Seine. The imperial couple clearly intended to set a tone, and the tone they set was: this is going to be excessive, and we are going to enjoy it. The Grand Prix de Paris itself was established in 1863 by the Société d’Encouragement pour l’amélioration des races de chevaux en France — a name that even the French found long — with an inaugural…