Killarney's Best Dressed Day 2026: Two Winners Under the Reeks

The last day of Killarney's August Festival is the one the town turns out for. The racing is National Hunt and the card is eight races deep, but Saturday at Killarney is billed plainly as Best Dressed Day, and by early afternoon the lawn in front of the stand had rearranged itself into the loose, drifting shape that every Irish style competition takes — people circling, being looked at, pretending not to notice.

The most scenic track in Ireland

Killarney has a claim few racecourses can match, and it makes it without much modesty: the MacGillycuddy's Reeks stand behind the back straight, Killarney National Park runs up to the boundary, and the whole thing is a walk from the middle of town. Racing has been held here since 1822 and on this site since 1936. It is a left-handed oval of just over nine furlongs with a three-furlong run-in and cambered bends, and it is widely described — by the track and by everyone else — as the most scenic in the country.

Four festivals a year come through it: May, July, August and October. This was the August one, three days from Thursday the 20th, ending Saturday with a first race at 1.25 and the Canella Lane Handicap Chase, a Listed race over two miles five, as the feature at 4.55.

Best Dressed Lady: Sylvia Novak

The Canella Lane Best Dressed title went to Sylvia Novak, in a look built almost entirely by one maker. The dress and the hat are both by Rita Daly, and so is the bag.

That is worth pausing on, because Rita Daly is not a label you buy off a rail. She works from Harbour Street in Tullamore, Co. Offaly — open three days a week, commissions by appointment — making handmade hats, headpieces, fascinators and, charmingly, miniature hat brooches. She is one of the small number of Irish milliners whose work is recognised on sight in an enclosure. A winning look that is dress, hat and bag from the same hands is a different proposition to a well-assembled one: it is a single idea carried all the way through.

The jewellery was the detail that rewarded a second look. It is made from recycled plastic, and it is magnetic — no clasps, no fiddling in the wind, and a material story that most people on the lawn would not have guessed at a glance. Daly also runs a jewellery line of her own, iADORN, alongside the millinery.

Best Dressed Man: Gary Moynihan

The men's title stayed in town. Gary Moynihan, a Killarney man, won it in a burgundy suit with a navy trim from Saville Menswear on Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork — the city's long-standing address for made-to-measure and formalwear.

The rest of it he shopped locally, which is part of why it worked. The tie was a navy paisley from Simply Suits in Killarney; the shoes were brown Derbies from Pavers at the Killarney Outlet Centre. Burgundy and navy is a harder pairing than it looks — both are dark, both are saturated, and done carelessly the suit reads black at ten paces. The navy trim is what saves it: it gives the eye the seam to follow, and the brown Derby breaks the whole thing open at the bottom rather than sealing it shut the way a black shoe would.

It is also, quietly, an entirely Munster outfit bar nothing — Cork for the suit, Killarney for the tie and the shoes.

Race Style & Social filmed the presentation and put it plainly on their own account: “Congratulations Gary on winning Best Dressed gentleman @killarneyracecourse supported by @canellalane. Your suit looks great!” You can watch the reel here.

The judges

The panel was Caoimhe McGinley and Michelle Fitzpatrick, and they arrived at the job from opposite ends of it.

McGinley is better known by her handle, @thebighillhouse — an account with something close to 160,000 followers that grew out of documenting the self-build of her own home. She is from Ballygawley, Co. Tyrone, and she came to it late and sideways: ten years teaching in the Middle East before she came home, four children, and a following built on interiors rather than clothes. That is an unusual CV for a race-day panel and, arguably, a useful one. Interiors people judge proportion, palette and whether a thing is finished. They are not looking for this season.

Fitzpatrick is the fashion half of it. She posts as @michelle_upthelane, was nominated in the Ireland's Most Stylish Fashionistas category at the 2024 Cointreau awards, and has moved from having taste to selling it — she curates her own edits for Carraig Donn, and, as it happens, for Canella Lane, the competition's sponsor. She is the panellist who will know what the dress is.

The sponsor is worth a line too. Canella Lane is an Irish online fashion boutique founded in 2014, selling dresses, jumpsuits, tailoring and accessories, and it put its name on the day's Listed chase as well as the style competition.

What the title is worth

Killarney does not do what Galway does. There is no five-figure cheque waiting at the end of the walkway. What the track hands out instead is time and travel — and on the evidence of the last two festivals, it hands out rather a lot of it.

Last August, under the O'Donoghue Ring Collection's sponsorship, the winner took a three-night stay at the Killarney Plaza Hotel & Spa with dinner each evening, spa treatments, a whiskey tasting and a choice of jaunting car or boat trip — and eighteen runners-up went home with prizes worth up to €200 apiece. In July this year, the Lee Strand competition sent Niamh Lordan to Paris with a crystal vase and Tariq Anwar to Milan with a bespoke decanter.

The August 2026 package had not been made public by the time this went up. When Killarney confirms it, we will add it here.

On the microphone

Working the enclosure was Race Style & Social, the race-day style outfit that has spent this summer at Ladies Days around the country, with Niamh Lordan on the mic — which closes a neat loop, given Lordan won Killarney's own Lee Strand Best Dressed Lady title at the July festival five weeks ago, in a Leo Lin dress under a glass hat she made herself.

The hat question

One detail set this year's men's result apart: Gary Moynihan won without a hat.

That is worth dwelling on, because it looked at first like a departure from protocol — and it turns out there is no protocol. We checked the published material at Killarney, the Curragh, Galway, Punchestown, Leopardstown, Fairyhouse, Listowel and Gowran Park. Not one Irish racecourse publishes entry criteria or judging criteria for a best dressed gent competition, and headwear is required nowhere. The Curragh states it plainly on its own website:

There is no official dress code at The Curragh Racecourse, or any Irish Racecourse.

Killarney's own guidance goes further in the other direction. Its "What to Wear" page tells racegoers to come "dressed to feel your best," and offers that "for some, feeling confident means a smart sweatshirt, a nice pair of jeans, and clean trainers."

There is a second point buried in the rules that do exist. Where Irish racing has formalised headwear, it has formalised it for women — Galway's Best Hat carries €3,000, Listowel awards €1,000 for Most Creative Headpiece. There is no men's equivalent at any course we checked. At Galway there is not even a men's category to have a convention about.

So no protocol was bent. What did happen is narrower and more interesting: a house habit at one racecourse was broken. Killarney's recent winning gents have worn hats with real consistency — Brian O'Connor took the 2023 title in a straw hat, Sean O'Donovan won in August 2025 in a pink suit with a navy hat, and Tariq Anwar won the July 2026 festival in a Louis Copeland white suit and an off-white Texas hat. The 2024 winner, Sean O'Leary, went undescribed in print, so that is three documented hats out of four rather than four out of four.

Moynihan is the first Killarney gent in that run to win bare-headed. Outside Kerry it would barely register: Listowel's winners are routinely described in suits, ties and boots with no headwear at all, and at Punchestown every female finalist's milliner gets named while no male finalist's hat is mentioned.

Which leaves an honest question rather than a verdict. If the hat was never a rule, only a habit — and the habit belonged to one racecourse rather than to Irish racing — then a burgundy suit with a navy trim and no hat is not a lowering of the standard. It is simply what the standard always permitted, finally being taken up.

The verdict

Two winners who did the same thing from different directions. Novak went to one maker and let her carry the whole look, down to a bag and a set of magnetic recycled-plastic earrings that most people would never have clocked. Moynihan went to three shops within an hour of each other and made a difficult colour pairing behave.

Neither won on spend. Both won on the bit that costs nothing and cannot be bought on the day — knowing exactly what you are going for before you leave the house.

Hero and racing photographs by Luisa Peter and Jin-Woo Lee on Unsplash. Winner photography by Pat Healy of Healy Racing, via @killarneyracecourse. Further coverage from the day: the gents' best dressed, the ladies' best dressed and Niamh Lordan on the mic.