I'm getting my head around hats

Think you know all there is to know about hats? Well, I thought I did, but a recent trip to the V&A taught me otherwise and opened up a whole world of millinery and head-adornment that I felt it was only right to share...

'Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones' is a collaborative exhibition between the V&A and one of the fashion world's most prolific milliners, Stephen Jones. Stephen Jones's work is represented in the permanent collections of the Louvre (Paris), The Fashion Institute of Technology and the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (both New York), the Kyoto Costume Institute, and the Australian National Gallery (Canberra). According to the milliner himself, however, London is 'the hat capital of the world', and so it comes as no suprise that it is here, in the V&A in London, that hats are the focus of a whole exhibition of which Stephen Jones is the curator. From the splendour of the guards' helmuts at Buckingham Palace to the baseball caps in Dalston market, the hat is, and always has been, embedded in the city's culture.

In the book published to coincide with the current exhibition, Jones laments "why are hats remaindered to the Timbuktu of fashion when they are in fact its Shangri-la?" And he's right. It has been many years since women, in the process of accessorising, have reached for hats as naturally as they do bags or jewellery. This major exhibition aims to revive interest in this oft-forgotten accessory. It traces the evolution of hats, from inspiration to the intricacies of construction, shedding light along the way on everything from the history of the hatbox to the turbans place in fashion.

Wandering the exhibition, I realised that the hat is more than a mere accessory. It is a sign of religious affiliation (yasmulke), a culural emblem (sombrebo), and a status symbol (mortarboard). It is a style signature both onscreen (Indiana Jones weathered fedora),and off (Slash's top hat). And, occasionally it can be a little bit of everything- such as the beret, which has been affiliated with countless military factions, Che Guevara, French culture, Bonnie & Clyde and er, Monica Lewinsky.

If you see me out and about wearing my newly purchased paper hat (not very practical, but then again, the best things in life rarely are), at least you now know why. Hats off to Stephen Jones!