Magnificent photos of a horse in a bespoke suit, shirt, tie and flatcap were revealed this month, and they quickly won Internet glory. The three-piece suit - billed as the "world's first Harris Tweed suit designed specifically for a race horse" by the bookmaker that commissioned it ahead of a major racing event in England - was made by a former apprentice to the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

The ensemble took four weeks to finish and required nearly 20 yards of tweed shipped in from Scotland, according to William Hill, the betting firm. Designer Emma Sandham-King pronounced it "one of the biggest challenges that I have faced in my career."

Many relevant questions could be asked about a tweed suit for a horse, which, in this case, is a retired racehorse named Morestead. Does a horse need a suit? Does a horse like to wear(cheap formal dresses australia) a suit?

But here, we will concern ourselves with only one question: Is it a well-designed horse suit? For answers, we turned to fashion guru, animal rights activist and dapper suit-wearer Tim Gunn.

"I think it's very brilliantly done," Gunn said of the horse couture. "The silhouette and the proportions and the fit are all outstanding."

It helps that the assignment was menswear, he said, because horse womenswear "could just end up being a big, voluminous mess."

Gunn is a former faculty member at Parsons the New School for Design(formal dresses sydney) in New York, and so he threw in some fashion education. Suit tailoring was born in the United Kingdom and popularized in contemporary times by 19th-century fashion arbiter Beau Brummell, said Gunn, who added that he has "the greatest respect for Harris Tweed; it's a venerable textile with a very distinguished history." (The fabric is handwoven by residents of Scotland's Outer Hebrides islands.)

But Morestead and the retired jockey who posed with him, Sir Anthony McCoy, deserve as much praise as the equine's suit, Gunn said.

"The horse looks more at ease and confident and believable than most women on the runway at awards shows. He doesn't look like a joke. He really looks noble and regal and believable," Gunn said. McCoy, he said, "looks smart and English countryside and enviable."

Gunn has some animal clothing-design cred, having mentored "Project Runway" contestants as they created pieces for dogs. But don't expect a horse challenge on the show any time soon.

"I don't think we could do any better than this," he said.