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It's one of the country's glamour race meetings, where some of the best jockeys and horses compete for $700,000 in prizemoney as the finest in fashion strut their stuff trackside at the Boxing Day races at Ellerslie.
Hundreds of punters are likely to have a flutter today, when star horse Xcellent is tipped to continue his winning form in the Zabeel Classic and good runs are also expected from Sir Slick and Alamosa.
The races signal the start of the three-day New Zealand Herald Christmas Carnival and more than 35,000 people are expected through the gates this year.
But not everyone is there to place wagers on horses, and the off-track highlight at today's meeting, the 2007 Deutz Fashions in the Field, is likely to turn a few heads.
This year's show will celebrate 20 years of parading the fanciest in frocks, frills and other fineries.
The event will feature a retrospective of the glitz and glamour from the past two decades of the Fashions in the Field, including past winners and winning designers.
Auckland Racing Club marketing director Rachel Holland said organisers were expecting up to 200 contestants to compete for the $65,000 prize pool in six categories.
Professional designers were encouraged to enter, although Ms Holland said the catwalk at the races was more "for the likes of you and me".
"Designers obviously play a part in this but this is really for people to get up there and have their 15 seconds of fame," she said.
One of the judges, former model Di Goldsworthy, said the event represented a rare chance for women and men to go all out and dress up.
"Our country is actually quite a casual nation and there really aren't many occasions where women and men feel they can go the whole way with the matching shoes, bags and hats," she said.
Although fashions invariably changed over the years, Ms Goldsworthy said, some things would always remain constant.
"That is style, elegance and the thought that has gone into the co-ordination of the entire outfit. These days I think people are a lot more casual and things have become freer, it's made the whole thing far more accessible for people than it used to be."
The Deutz Supreme Award, for the overall winner, includes a one-year lease of a B-class Mercedes-Benz, several thousand dollars worth of clothing and jewellery and a Fiji cruise.
