Stephen Jones, Milliner

It’s unusual to fall in love with a man you haven’t met, especially if you’re straight. Nonetheless I fell in love with milliner Stephen Jones the moment I walked into Hats: An Anthology at the V&A in London this April. He had put together an exhibition that sang to anyone with a passion for hats. The exhibition could absorb a hatlover for hours.

"Inspiration"

The exhibition space was lit for falling in love, almost all the light was reserved for the cabinets, the rest of the room was left in a purple-tinted glow. As a result, there was nowhere else to look but at the hats and they had me from the first cabinet, “Inspiration”. (The exhibit progressed from Inspiration to Creation and on to The Salon, finishing with The Client.)

“Hats have to be a mirror of their age with touch of whimsy,” Stephen Jones writes in his introduction to Inspiration. And how right he is. Standout pieces in the Inspiration section included Jones’ own Tube Hat (a London Underground logo worn at a jaunty angle and held in place with a band inspired by the iconic Tube map) and his Costermonger, a flat cap covered in miniature fruit and vegetables.

My favourite hat of the exhibition was also in the Inspiration section. It was the tweed crown from Vivienne Westwood’s 1987 Harris tweed collection. What an amazing piece; celebrating the traditional through the choice of material but sending it up through the choice of form.

Vivienne Westwood's Tweed Crown

This anthology would be wonderful exhibit to show to anyone who can’t get further than Indiana Jones in his thinking about hats as fashion or as snapshots of their in time. (Not for the first time, I got called “Indy” the other day. I was wearing a flat cap.)

Stephen Jones' Still Life hat

This is true even though there was little from the world of men’s hats in the exhibition. You can’t help but see why when you’re looking in amazement at the women’s hats. How could you stand a fedora (even Indy’s) next to something as interesting and evocative as Jones’ Still Life hat. (A vibrant pink rose with green leaves fastened with a paint brush with a transparent handle and pink bristles.)

The whimsy and the creativity brought to women’s heads has no match in men’s hats and it’s a shame. Rosie tells me in the first Open Crown podcast that she saw much more creativity in men’s hats in Japan; and I hope it’s coming west. When I picture Strand Hatters or City Hatters, both of which I’ve been in recently, I picture rows of hats devoid of anything you might call whimsy or flair. For men in the west it’s perhaps challenging enough to wear a hat without pushing the envelope further than a trilby, fedora or flat cap: if you can attract Indiana Jones comments in a black Kangol flat cap, any kind of hat is “flair”.

A knitted fez from Stephen Jones' 2009 collection

Some of Stephen Jones’ whimsy is available to men through his Jonesboy label, including a knitted fez for 2009. I look at the picture and it just makes me sad he has no stockist in Australia.

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones closed in May but it lives on through the V&A microsite, which includes some wonderful videos, and the SHOWstudio Hats Off site, featuring a panorama of the exhibition and more videos.

I can’t recommend highly enough the accompanying book. I don’t think it matters even to a lover of men’s hats that there is little mention of them in the book. It is impossible to love hats and not be captivated by the creativity evident in the hats pictured and enlighted by the insights the text gives into each of the four stages Jones lays out: inspiration, creation, salon and client. The book includes a list of further reading, biographies of milliners past and present. It’s an essential reference and it stands very much on its own; in fact I might give it a separate review later.

On Location: An interview with Stephen Jones from Victoria and Albert Museum on Vimeo.

City Hatters' window display

Arriving in Melbourne on a crisp and wintry June night, my first look at City Hatters was its illuminated olde worlde window display. It was easy to find: the shop was, as its slogan and website promised, under the clocks of Flinders Street train station, opposite Federation Square in the heart of the city. By night you can’t miss the aging neon sign flickering the words “City” and “Hatters” alternately then together.

As a lover of men’s hats you can only fall in love with that window display. Underneath old school gilt lettering advertising headwear for men, deerstalkers sit on wooden stands next to trilbies, newsboys, tweed bucket hats, antique hatboxs, and walking canes. Down the steps, you can see a pyramid of top hats ion display in the window by the door.

On this Friday night, City Hatters’ time-warped window display was incongruously innocent next to the vibrant flow of purple-haired goths, toughs in hoodies, and party girls falling out of the train station for a Friday night in the bars around Federation Square, down the Yarra River and beyond.

The charming window was far more promising than the City Hatters website, which I’d looked at the day before. Of the eight brands listed, the pages for six of them said apologetically, “There are no available products under this manufacturer.” So why list them for me to click on?

Part of the large selection at City Hatters

The next morning I found out just how little justice the website does this great little shop. City Hatters is piled floor to ceiling with straws, trilbies, pork pies, flat caps, the odd deerstalker, all kinds of Akubras, and even a bright red sombrero next to a handful tricorns.

But the thing that ensured I went back three times in our two day visit was the staff. Shortly after I walked in, I was asked if I would like any help then left alone when I said I was happy — very happy — browsing.

When I went back later, Christian, looking sharp and professional in a dark suit and black tie was engaging on the history of the shop. He didn’t need Tess to suggest twice that he pop on a tricorn for a picture when I asked to take some for the blog. Tess didn’t need to pick a hat for the picture: she was already wearing a carriage hat and outfit to match. Two staff for such a small shop suggests an emphasis on customer service. (There is also a bespoke hatter on staff.)

Tess and Christian

The quaint shop window framed in gilt letters, the lady in the carrage hat, and the cockney boy soprano on the sound system combined to make City Hatters an endearingly eccentric place to be on a cold morning and, if we’re honest, endearingly eccentric is surely how many hat aficionados would see themselves, which makes City Hatters a perfect place to shop.

City Hatters has been around — and in the same location — for 99 years. It has survived, as the website says, “depressions, recessions, good times, bad times, hat times and hatless times”. From what I’ve seen, there are another 99 years in the shop and I hope to be going back in many of them.

See the Open Crown Flickr pool for more pictures of City Hatters