In a black Mercedes SLK280, a man named Shail Upadhya nestled into the cocoon-like leather seats. “I’ve been coming to polo ever since it started,” Mr. Upadhya said, “because I have a house here in Southampton, and the fact that polo really started in India, where the maharajah is, and I used to hang out with maharajahs and these princely people who used to play polo when polo was polo. It wasn’t Bridgehampton in those days.”

Mr. Upadhya was dressed, as is his infamous custom, in a wild and garish linen suit of his own design: beige, with red, green, blue and ochre oval splotches stamped all over it. His face was the color of an ancient scroll, his hair dyed a matching parchment color. He described himself as being “in exile” from the monarchy in Nepal. Mr. Upadhya was nostalgic for an era of polo long before this one, taking it back to the British Raj, bonnets and Gatsby suits.

“Here you see a lot of paparazzi,” he said. “All they want to do is take pictures of celebrities, and they want to get that one shot that will get them a million dollars. And a lot of the people I see here, they’re in T-shirts, and they really don’t know what polo is, or how to dress for polo. I’ve always dressed very elegantly for polo, because I know what it is.”