$27 lost in unofficial betting, a wind that made the day feel more like October than May, and way too much people watching after one too many mint juleps. It was standard fare for Gold Cup, but my gal pals and I enjoyed it to the fullest. I'm fairly certain that by 2pm, after a mere three hours, we lost count of the number of poorly dressed people and by poorly dressed I mean long sleeve shirts and shorts on the men (didn't that go out of style in middle school??), dresses that were too tight on various women (flowy fabrics ladies!! Stretch fabrics cling in all the wrong places), and clashing colors of plaid.

So, what did my people watching bestow? A few best ofs, and more worst ofs (my camera died before I could get pictures of a lot of the best dressed)

Now, I was saying to a friend of mine that Gold Cup seems to have been invaded by the DC "Hipster" crowd - it seems as if there were many people who were dressed as if they should have been walking on the beach in Fort Lauderdale or Miami and not at Gold Cup - the premier event of Northern Virginia. This guy? Looked like he walked out of a casino in Atlantic City. He tops our list of "worst of."

You can't see them, but these guys were all wearing bright argyle socks. They weren't dressed badly perse, but rather, made Gold Cup look like the circus.

Cowboy boots and a flowy Chiffon dress....need I say more? Similarly, wellies and a Lily Pulitzer dress are not the greatest combo.

I really actually liked the girl in the pink with the white sweater draped over her shoulder, but the guy in the flower pants? Not so much.

I adore the madras print dress that this girl was wearing here. The straw floppy hat worked with it perfectly. So many times you see girls wearing cute hats that don't necessarily go with their dresses.

My favorite, I happened to see linked on twitter today...

Love that the hat compliments the dress so well! [Source: OhmyGoff]

My gals and I wore dresses from Ann Taylor Loft, Lily Pulitzer and JCrew, respectively. Surprisingly I didn't see many people wearing the same dress - though I'm sure there were some duplicates--how could there not be in a crowd of 45,000 people. So even though I lost $27 betting on horses that dropped out, or came in dead last, Gold Cup was still a huge hit. I just hope my gal pals had as good of a time that I did!