Massimo Dutti takes us for a ride

What the hell do I wear to a show jumping competition?” I asked my friends on Twitter. You see, while I may have named my pet rabbit Pony, I’ve never actually been on a pony. I’m not one of those girls who grew up taking riding lessons at the Polo Club (or wherever it is would-be baby equestriennes learn to ride here in Manila). I’ve seen enough period dramas to secretly want to learn, of course, but there were pursuits that were ultimately easier to go for. And so, the dream of galloping through hectares of land on a hacienda that we didn’t own atop a mighty and beautiful steed that we also didn’t own died a quick and mostly un-mourned death. (I’m still sadder that I’m not in a band, to be honest. I can live with not being Lady Mary Crawley, but it guts me that I’m not Karen O.)

But I digress. “A hat?” someone suggested. Clearly, like me, my friend’s only exposure to the equestrian fashion world is through photos of the United Kingdom’s royal family at polo matches. The decision came down to a little black dress or a black jumpsuit, and with both thrown into my tiny suitcase, I was out the door to catch my plane to Hong Kong, sleepless and bleary-eyed, to attend the 2014 Longines Hong Kong Masters (LHKM). This is the second year for Asia’s only five-star accredited international show jumping event to be held (perhaps not so coincidentally, the Year of the Horse), this time at the AsiaWorld-Expo over the course of three days, with the world’s best riders in attendance, competing for a total of US$1,000,000 in prizes. Smashing!

I was invited by Massimo Dutti, a sponsor of this year’s LHKM. Founded in 1985, the brand has been sponsoring international show jumping competitions all over the world since 1999, with the Massimo Dutti Trophy up for grabs in various European locales since 2007. The brand's foray into equestrian tradition, unsurprisingly, bled into their fashion in 2013 with an exclusive collection inspired by the show jumping world and modeled by stunning and statuesque clotheshorses Carolyn Murphy and David Gandy.

Many of the most well-respected fashion houses have a long history of equestrian tradition and riding heritage, because who wouldn’t want to be associated with that? More than anything else, or at least to me, riding has always seemed an aristocratic pursuit; and riders, graceful, elegant and stylish, to-the-manor-born. It’s the ultimate in aspirational. (Now I’m regretting never taking riding lessons.)

I arrived at my hotel to a bouquet of flowers, but more importantly, a box of Godiva truffles that disappeared into my mouth at an embarrassing and alarming speed. After getting refreshed and prepping for the festivities (I wore the jumpsuit; it was cold in Hong Kong), we were off to the AsiaWorld-Expo.

Our first stop was the Massimo Dutti setup in the Prestige Village that was adjacent to the arena, where guests and spectators could look at art, check out educational booths, or spend some cold, hard cash on lovely clothes at pop-up shops; all of the partner brands were presenting collections. Massimo Dutti’s ladies’ collection was the ultimate in understated elegance: crisp and well cut, in clean brown, khaki, and olive, with a few gorgeous pieces in butter-soft camel-colored leather. (I fell in love with a jacket, but I always fall in love with leather jackets.) It was all the sort of beautifully-tailored thing I’d like to be wearing in 10 years, when I finally grow up to be very, very rich.

After failing to sneak said leather jacket into the tiny envelope clutch I was toting, we took our seats at our table in the Masters Club and readied ourselves for dinner — prepared by two-star Michelin chef Yves Mattagne — and the main event for the evening: the competition for the Hong Kong Jockey Club Trophy.

I have literally no background in riding, let alone show jumping, but the scoring system was simple enough to figure out once the competition was underway: You get penalties for each bar you knock over, and you get penalties if you exceed the time allotted for the round. Twenty-eight of the world’s best jumped a course of 12 fences, with some of them at heights of 1.55 meters. The 15 who completed the course the quickest without incurring penalties qualified for the second round with their scores set back to zero. The goal: To be the fastest to get through the course with a clean sheet. The stakes: US$100,000 in prize money.

It is so easy to get sucked into the entire spectacle of show jumping when it’s happening in front of you. It’s an event I typically don’t bother watching when it’s Olympics season because I used to think it stuffy and dull (I prefer the various gymnastic events, and figure skating during the Winter Olympics). But in real life? It’s absolutely mesmerizing. Discipline, precision, strength and elegance. I can imagine the sheer difficulty of working in tandem with a powerful animal that you need to control. It’s one thing to understand your own body’s capabilities when it comes to a sport (says the girl who engages in no sport aside from sarcasm), but when you ride you need to take another living creature (with a mind of its own, as a rider or two showed us that night when the horse refused to jump a hurdle) into consideration.

It was amazing to watch, and we were all on the edges of our seats, with gasps rising through the arena every time a bar was knocked over, applause ringing when a rider and his or her horse made it cleanly through a difficult series of jumps, and excited chatter echoing if a rider looked close to clinching the fastest time. (Harrie Smolders from the Netherlands took the top prize that night, and Marc Houtzager, also from the Netherlands, won the Prix Massimo Dutti the next day.)

We capped the night with a bottle of delicious Antoine Moueix white wine (handed to me by a very nice man, “For you, ladies,” he said) and good conversation, and I went to sleep that night imagining what I might look like if I ever rode a horse. (FYI: I had that Massimo Dutti jacket on, and I did not name my horse “Pony.”) Ride on.