Free dress wins best dressed competition for Tullamore's Lisa

Tullamore’s Lisa McGowan won best dressed lady at Kilbeggan Races last Friday in style - wearing a free dress and a headpiece she exchanged at the last minute on the advice of her eleven-year-old son.

Having only decided to go to the races two days beforehand, Lisa, who works at the family business McGowan Insurance on Patrick Street, didn’t spend too much time thinking about her outfit.

Her dress, a Tempest Hunter dress with corset top and lace overlay, came compliments of Tullamore shop Electric Candy for some recent modelling work.

She added to that a bright pink headpiece by Pamela Curtin Millinery in Portlaoise, before deciding to swap that for a red headpiece at the last minute when her son Daragh (11) advised against the pink.

Her shoes and bag, from Paul Byron and Glitzi Bitz, were added to the ensemble only at 4pm on Friday afternoon - just hours before she won the prize.

Lisa said she had no designs on the competition, and was only going to the races for a good time. Travelling with The Copper Pot Still, she was enjoying a gin and tonic at the racecourse bar when judge Marietta Doran approached, complimented her headpiece and told her to show up at the tent with other finalists later that evening.

Lisa’s prize for being crowned best dressed includes a €1,000 Dundrum Town Centre voucher, which she plans on starting to spend this Saturday, and a ‘weekend of style’ in Wineport Lodge in Glasson.

What’s more, she also won a best dressed competition in The Copper Pot Still on her return to Tullamore, netting an overnight stay with breakfast and spa treatments in the Bridge House Hotel.

“I’m thrilled,” she told the Offaly Independent. “We’re just back from holiday in Florida so I’m stony broke. I’m going up to Dundrum on Saturday.”