Amanda Macor is known around town as a fashion doyen, but Robyn Rankin scratches the surface to find so much more.

Look beneath the surface and you will see that Amanda Macor does not fit the stereotype of fashion maven.

Sure, she looks fantastic, she’s respected within the fashion world, she’s got amazing style and she’s funky. But go a little deeper and you will find more passion for racewear than just what looks good. And her passion for racing and fashion stem from a very simple background – her childhood.

Amanda grew up the daughter of a jockey in the Northern Territory and her mother was a bookie’s clerk, so it was natural for Amanda and her brother to be around race tracks from a very young age.

Some of her fondest memories are of her father crossing the finish line at the front of the pack, grinning at his family, and of her mother, always dressed in a hat and gloves for the track.

Her mother used to make racing silks and is still a clerk for Amanda’s bookie uncle.

Although based in Darwin, the family travelled to race meets around the Territory.

It was only when her father had a career-ending accident when Amanda was 18 that he stopped racing. But the family, now based at Charters Towers, retains close links to the racing fraternity.

Amanda left the Territory aged 21, headed to Brisbane, working there for a short time before a corporate role brought her to Cairns.

Within a year she had met and married Stephen, a builder, and it was when daughter Stephanie was nine months old that Amanda’s life changed course.

She gained a position as hairdressing salon manager with Ross Stokes and that was when she discovered the world of millinery.

“I remember we had to do this show
where the style had to go from daywear to nightwear and we decided to cover up the nightwear hairstyle and it just went from there,” she laughs. “Someone asked: ‘Do you do hats?’ and I said: ‘No, but OK’.”

It was then that her latent artistic and creative talent came to the fore. She has created some stunning headwear and recently took part in a milliner’s exhibition called Headware Hardware at the Cairns Regional Gallery.

Amanda’s grandmother taught her many handicrafts and as a child she won art competitions. “My grandmother was particularly clever, she spun her own wool, she taught me macramé and crochet,” she says.

“If I’m home and bored, which isn’t often, I’ll paint. But I’m not a person who looks at the ocean and gets inspired. It’s always been about textiles for me. I’ll look at a piece of fabric and see what it could become.”

Amanda spends her days perfecting eyebrows, as owner of Brow Babes boutique in Grafton St, designing headwear as a milliner and co-ordinator of Fashions on the Field for the Cairns Cup, but she sees her most important roles as wife to Stephen and mother to Stephanie, 16, and Alex, 12.

While she might be designing headgear, outfits or shaping the perfect brow one minute, the next she will be taking Stephanie on a driving lesson on the way to school.

Amanda maintains the family’s racing
links in her own way, as Cairns Cup Fashions on the Field co-ordinator and now as a committee member of the Cairns Jockey Club. These roles confirm the respect in which she is held as well as her passion for racing.

Courtesy of her trackside upbringing, Amanda has worked in most roles at racecourses, from working with horses through to serving behind the bar, “whichever paid best”, she laughs. “The Jockey Club is a passion. I want to see it do well.”

Her passion for looking right, shaping brows or accessorising the perfect outfit is equal to her enthusiasm for racing and the future of the industry in Cairns.

She enthuses about the Cairns Jockey Club committee’s commitment and is excited about the new turn that Fashions on the Field will take come August 9 and 10.

Fashions will undertake a revolution, with a national standard in judging being introduced, in partnership with major sponsor Myer, which sponsors race events elsewhere in the country. Amanda says the same standards will be applied at most major race meetings, as well as a more streamlined process where entrants are judged in batches of 20, with the top three going on to the next stage.

The new system means entrants who don’t go on to the next phase of judging will be free to enjoy the rest of the day, rather than waiting around for judging.

Part of what she loves about Fashions on the Field is the attention to detail.

“I like seeing how a woman puts it all together, particularly the accessories. That’s probably how my own style has changed over the years, I pay more attention to accessories these days,” she says.

Amanda also gets a thrill from seeing how younger girls present themselves and watching how the same girl might tweak their look from one race to the next. “They think you don’t notice them but I do,” she says.

Noting that fashions among the younger generation has tended to be “grungy” in
recent years, Amanda says it has a very “nightclub” feel now. She adds it is good that men are experimenting with their individuality. She says it’s important to dress for your body shape and skin colour and that the right accessories can change an outfit umpteen times. Even she has made some mistakes over the years, including one clanger she and friend Maria Dalziel refer to as “Driving Miss Daisy”, that was inspired by a Barbie doll.

“We’re on the fence right now. We’ve got a couple of looks that could go horribly wrong but we’re not frightened to take chances. If it goes wrong, you just have a few drinks and a laugh about it.”

As for fashions at this year’s Cairns Cup? As it is a winter race meet in the tropics, she predicted rich winter colours would be strong such as purple, grey, black, hot fuchsia pinks in bold but not bright hues, as well as yellow.

“You do have to be careful with yellow. Not everyone can wear it. There’s probably 10 per cent of the population that can wear it.”

Amanda also is excited about the men’s racewear section that will be introduced for the first time and she urged stylish men to don their trilby’s, funky suits and interesting accessories and get noticed. “I notice they’re wearing a lot of white in belts and shoes, it has that slight retro feel to it. Men should embrace their own individuality.”

Individuality is something she clearly embraces herself and perhaps it is her unusual upbringing that helps her feel free to
express it.

Racing is definitely in her blood. She might not be racing horses or mucking out stables but Amanda Macor is as much a part of the racing scene in Cairns as the jockeys and trainers.

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