Henley Royal Regatta is the most prestigious rowing regatta in the world, and represents the apex of the sport outside of the Olympic Games and the World Championships.
Like the Head of the Charles and the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, it is a rowing event that captures the public imagination and attracts vast international audiences. It is also, along with Royal Ascot and Wimbledon, a major fixture on the British summer social calendar.
The Regatta has played a crucial role in ensuring that rowing’s glorious, if quirky, blazer culture is both surviving and thriving nearly two centuries on. For the Regatta has maintained a picturesque Edwardian dress code that “encourages” ladies to wear hats and prevents gentlemen from removing their jackets. Henley, therefore, provides an annual five-day forum for rowers young and old to see and be seen, decked out in all of their coveted, flamboyant finery.
Rowing Blazers is proud to be a keeper of the blazer tradition and to make blazers for - not every rowing club represented at the Regatta - but some of the most prestigious, including many of this year’s winners: Harvard, Leander Club, Molesey Boat Club, and Oxford Brookes.
This year’s Henley Royal Regatta also marked the 100th anniversary of the Henley Peace Regatta - a special edition of the event held to commemorate the end of the Great War. At the 1919 Peace Regatta, a special prize was created, the King’s Cup, to be contested that year only and was won by a crew from the Australian Armed Forces.
This year, the King’s Cup returned to Henley as an event for armed services crews from Europe, the U.S., and Canada. The final was a race between an all-star crew from the German Bundeswehr, and a U.S. Naval Academy crew representing the U.S.A. We are very proud to say that the Naval Academy crew won in a very close and exciting race - and proud too to have made the team’s beautiful blazers.
Photos by All Mark One