With LFW upon us, Flo and I have taken a step sideways, and gone in search of men's classic hats. A penchant for hats runs in the family, as you might infer from the head-wear theme that may or may not be surfacing (see Flo's Mad Hatter's tea party for more).
Bates the hatter is located in Mayfair's Jermyn Street, near to Saville Row. They've been in business since 1898, but Jean-Luc (guardian of the hats) was fast to tell us that men's hat styles haven't changed at all during that time.
I'm sometimes jealous of men getting dressed in the morning. Being a stylish man about town is so much more about finding classics to suit, but being in Bates made me feel very lucky to be a woman too. Putting on a felt fedora with my tartan cinched work dress immediately looked more Shoreditch, whereas a guy would look strange wearing his with anything other than formal wear and to anywhere other than the races. Clearly this isn't true of all men or all hats. A handle-bar moustache and boater don't turn a head in Victoria park on a sunny Saturday, but I think we can all agree that's the exception rather than the norm.
Bates are going to be putting out a range of women's wear very soon. I'm hoping that they simply design smaller versions of the most classic mens wear styles, as this collection will be ready-to-wear so it's important that the concept maintains its edge.
I'll be first in the queue to snap one up, in-part because these original boxes are one-of-a-kind and I have a thing for 19th century commercial labels...
...oh and to visit Binks the cat - the only taxidermy in Britain to pull coach loads of tourists from South East Asia I'm sure.
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