The Cocktail Hat....Fashionweekly..On Fow24news.com

If designers are to have their way, this summer will be the season of the attention-seeking hat.As a nation we have a tricky relationship with hats – we are singularly responsible for making the fascinator rubbish on Race days, and the trilby a disastrous indie rock cliché....
London’s hat wearers are Pete Doherty parodies rather than Marlene Dietrich doppelgängers. Excluding the knit beanie (essential in these plummeting temperatures), or coquettish beret, we simply do not wear hats well these days. But, if designers are to have their way, this summer will be the season of the cocktail hat – as Charlotte Sinclair discovers in the
From Erdem’s hand-moulded black panamas (created by master milliner Noel Stewart and paired with romantic Victorian gowns) to Ralph Lauren’s gigantic cowboy hats, or Undercover’s plump baker boy caps, the incoming catwalk renditions are all about fancy dress pomp. And, unlike a beanie, which you would naturally pull-off upon entering the office (unless you’re the sort of person that wears a woolly hat with a T-shirt and love beads year-round - don’t be that person), the decorative cocktail hat is meant to be kept on indoors, especially at parties, where you can benefit from a unique perk: the delimitation of personal space. A precious commodity in this era of cheek-to-cheek selfies.

So, how does a giant hat hold up at work in the Vogue office? Not well to be honest. The fashion industry loves flowers, so the walk to my desk between various bouquets re-enacts Audrey Hepburn’s return to Covent Garden market in My Fair Lady. On my head I'm wearing an incredible piece of craftsmanship from Gucci's spring/summer collection complete with enormous floppy silk flower. Once seated, I pop-up from beneath the wide brim like Oscar the grouch to answer the phone.There is however an innate glamour to the ritual of wearing a hat. Once fastened in using the chunky beige chin strap, the weight and structure instantly enhances my deportment - which is a word I haven’t used in a long while, because we’re all getting far too used to jersey sportswear and slouchy jeans. Although I’m aware that from behind I look like I’m wearing pirate drag, I’m also rather enthralled at how the detailed embroidery shimmers under the sunlight straining to pierce the gloom over Hanover Square. Major downside: My vision is an issue. The slightest slip of the brim could plunge you into a blackout.

Vogue’s beauty director Nicola Moulton pauses by my desk. “Lovely” she says, tilting her head to one side to concentrate her gaze. “Would you wear it?” I ask, noting that everything sounds like I’m underwater from beneath the brim. “No. It reminds me of when E.T. dresses up in the mother’s clothes.”She’s right. All I am missing is the blonde wig and pearls. Unperturbed, I muse how E.T.’s upholstery floral dress would be a decent wardrobe match, then convince myself the shrunken football tee I dug out this morning works just as well, in a Taxi Driver era Jodie Foster sort of way, before realising I’m missing the point. A hat is about zero-functionality, and total glamour. Office life is the entire opposite. The only thing you should wear on your head during work hours is a decent haircut.