Royal Ascot is not only one of the major events of Britain's sporting calendar - the week-long horse racing event is the ultimate fashion show, of which outrageous ladies' hats are a hallmark. Indeed, it is a racing certainty that the most outlandish hats will turn up between the pages of Britain's top daily newspapers, but what no one was betting on this year was that the one worn by a fun-loving real estate agent from Bermuda would be among them.

Certainly, nobody was more surprised than Clive Thatcher when, over breakfast, he opened a copy of UK tabloid The Daily Mail and beheld a picture of his wife, Lyndy, sporting her pink Bermuda cottage hat. While Mrs. Thatcher was not identified by name, there was no mistaking the distinctive traditional architecture perched atop her mane.

Inspired by what she saw while attending Ascot some years before, Mrs. Thatcher decided that this year, since she would be watching the races from the Royal Enclosure along with good friends Stephen, Jane and Tripp West, she would go all out and join the British fillies in the chapeau stakes.

"I knew there was a very strict dress code in the royal enclosure - dresses and hats - so I decided that instead of buying a hat I would make one," she says.

Mrs. Thatcher's first move was to call Michael Mello, who is very creative and particularly likes new challenges, and ask him if he was interested in the project.

"He was, so I took him a wide-brimmed hat and since I'm in real estate I told him I wanted a pink cottage with a chimney, shutters, cedar doors, palm trees, etcetera," she recalls. "He said, `Fine, now go away'."

Under starter's orders, Mr. Mello set to work with a will, and what he ultimately came up left his client astonished.

"The hat is truly extraordinary," Mrs. Thatcher enthuses. "Not only does the interior have furniture, but also the cottage has a grass lawn, stepping stones, flowers, and even oleanders going up the cottage wall. At one end there is a Bermuda sand beach, with coral and shells, and a beach towel and flip flops in the corner. Under the sand there is painted blue sea, and in it are fish. Michael is very, very clever and I was thrilled."

Nonetheless, a friend advised her that the finished hat was not quite fancy enough for the Royal Enclosure, so she added a cloud of tulle, into which the flowers fell and the fish were caught as if in a net.

On the day, if her husband found it necessary to keep a discreet distance behind his extroverted wife, fellow racegoers felt no such inhibitions. Indeed, some of them even dropped sufficient of their traditional British reserve to chat briefly with Mrs. Thatcher about her headwear.

While "photographers were everywhere" she was not aware of the power of the long lens until her husband opened the newspaper. Needless to say, she was tickled pink to know that all of the advance preparations, which included flying the hat over as luggage in a large plastic bin filled with styrofoam "peanuts" and secured with rope, had paid off.

Of the day itself, Mrs. Thatcher said it was filled with memories, not least seeing the Queen at very close range.

"She kind of looked at me but didn't say anything," she relates. "The Royals come out to look over the horses as they parade around before each race, and Charles was there and I believe Camilla, although I didn't see her."

Describing the atmosphere of the glorious sunny day, Mrs. Thatcher said: "Everybody was drinking champagne and eating strawberries. Unlike the United States, where the tracks are predominantly dirt and the races are run anti-clockwise, Ascot's track is deep green turf, which was really pretty, and the uphill part was right in front of the stand. We had a really great time."

As for her winner of a hat, that too is now back in Bermuda and apparently to be retired in her office.

"As I'm in real estate, I think it's a fitting place for it to live," Mrs. Thatcher says.