Fashionista won two races, placed 14 more times, and earned six-figures as a racehorse, but we think that her future as a broodmare is even more promising than those facts indicate, given that she is inbred 4×4 to Larry Johnson’s foundation mare Ran’s Chick in the Rasmussen Factor “Formula One” pattern. What that means is that both her sire — the G3 winner and longtime local stallion Street Magician — and her dam — the black-type winning 2YO A Lover’s Question — trace in tail female to Ran’s Chick, who is the 3rd dam of each of Fashionista’s parents. And there are multiple instances of stellar broodmares with this pattern who were better producers than racehorses (as outlined in Rommy Faversham & Leon Rasmussen’s “Inbreeding to Superior Females: Using the Rasmussen Factor to Produce Better Racehorses”).
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To kick off Fashionista’s Mid-Atlantic breeding career, nobody who has been a regular reader of this blog will be surprised to hear that we’ve picked Murmur Farm’s Blofeld. You’ve no doubt read plenty of our mating plans outlining Blofeld’s statistics over the last few seasons, so we’ll just hit the highlights again here. From his first 108 runners, Blofeld is now up to 84 winners (as of 3/15/26), including ten black-type winners and another ten black-type placed runners, with average earnings of $91,369 per runner. His AEI currently sits at 1.32, which is well above the 1.10 CI that his mates bring to the table, meaning that he continues to move those mares up, and so far in 2026 his runners are hitting the board an incredible 60% of the time.
Blofeld has now led the Mid-Atlantic by number of mares bred for four straight years, starting with a reported 86 mares in ‘22 (this is his 3YO crop of ‘25, which already includes black-type winner Code of Silence), 99 mares in ‘23, 77 mares in ‘24, and 95 mares in ‘25. So he seems poised to take over Maryland’s leading sire mantle sooner rather than later, and it’s hard to see him relinquishing that crown anytime soon once he does so.
We always prefer to start a young broodmare off with a proven stallion for a year or two at the beginning of her breeding career, as it gives an owner a better line on the broodmare’s potential (as opposed to breeding her to unproven stallions that are likely to fail, in which case you wouldn’t know if her unsuccessful foals were due to her contributions, or to that of those stallions). Blofeld absolutely fits that “proven” bill now, and he also fits Fashionista for several additional reasons.
Blofeld still doesn’t have any runners out of mares from the Street Cry sire-line, but there is a black-type winner by Quality Road out of a Street Cry mare, and a Grade 2-placed runner by Quality Road out of a Street Sense mare — so that’s promising for this particular pairing even if the “C” TrueNicks rating is from a cross that’s too broad to be really meaningful.
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But the 2025 (non black-type) stakes winner Noquestionaboutit — who is out of a 3/4-sister to Fashionista (both are sired by Street Magician, and their dams are half-sisters) — is sired by a son of Elusive Quality, just like Blofeld’s sire Quality Road. So we think that bodes well for the foal from this pairing. And there are numerous other black-type winners by that same stallion and from Fashionista’s immediate female family, including the likes of Great Soul, Doing Great, and Valued Notion. Plus, from another branch of the family comes the very talented Maryland-bred champion Never Enough Time, who is by a grandson of Gone West, just like Quality Road.
Then, Fashionista’s broodmare sire is Spring At Last, a grandson of Deputy Minister. The cross of Blofeld’s sire Quality Road with Deputy Minister-line mares has accounted for the likes of G1 winners City of Light, Abel Tasman (an Eclipse Champion) and Spring Quality. Blofeld himself has fourteen runners so far out of Deputy Minister-line mares, of which eleven are winners, with average earnings for those runners of just about $100k including the black-type placed Dwelling Legacy. And Blofeld’s single runner out of a mare by Spring At Last specifically is an earner of just shy of $100k so far.
Both Blofeld and Fashionista were at their best at a mile, and on dirt. So proclivities-wise, they’re a good match. And physically, both are scopey individuals with plenty of leg and length, so they’re a fine like-to-like pairing there, as well.
All of which we anticipate will result in a successful Virginia-bred runner to kick off Fashionista’s career in the breeding shed!