Fashion curator Oriole Cullen, who grew up in Dalkey, and milliner Stephen Jones are about to unveil a major exhibition devoted to hats – from Queen Victoria’s bonnet to an Egyptian fez from about AD 1100 – at the VA in London
SOME SAY JFK killed the hat. During the 1960 presidential election, hat salesmen followed “hatless Jack” everywhere, desperately pressing their wares on him. Even the chairman of the Hat Corporation voiced a not entirely disinterested concern. “We want Mr Kennedy to wear hats. He’ll feel better in a hat, and won’t get head colds. A president shouldn’t get head colds.
“You put a hat on Kennedy, you lose three-quarters of the head and all the charisma,” came the blunt response from a friend.
In the end Kennedy did wear a hat to his inauguration – a traditional silk top. But it stayed on his seat when he took to the podium and exhorted the millions watching on television to “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
So it felt like he didn’t have one. And it felt right that he didn’t. “Hatless”, once an adjective associated with hobos and bums, was rapidly becoming a byword for youth and vigour. The hat industry was already in serious trouble when Kennedy delivered the coup de grâce, not only to it but to the era of conservatism that hats represented. The sight of a sea of flat-caps and fedoras at a stadium or a train station gradually became a thing of the past, and the everyday hat, once as necessary as shoes and socks, faded away.
Millinery, however, not only survived but is still thriving. Millinery, the art of designing beautiful, often intricate, handmade hats for women, is “a more frivolous idea”, says Oriole Cullen, fashion curator at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, better known as the VA.
“It is more about a decorative approach to hats and hat-wearing. The bowler hat or the top hat marked you in as part of a group. Millinery is about marking you out. It’s your own personality. Your own statement. On your head.”
We are in the museum's North Court Store, hidden behind a door off one of the countless galleries of sculpture, jewellery, photography, furniture and fashion. Dublin-born Cullen and Stephen Jones, the doyen of hat designers, have spent the past two years tucked away in this "Aladdin's Cave", as Cullen puts it, working their way through the archive in preparation for the VA's new exhibition, Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones.
She is in full flight, describing the many different variations of this ultimate fashion accessory. “Dramatic changes occur within a small period of time, for instance the small, jewel-like bonnets of the 1890s couldn’t be farther from the gigantic, voluminous hats of the 1910s, with crowns so exaggerated that they had to be padded on the inside so that they didn’t fall down in front of the face.”
Cullen discovered the world of hats and fashion while growing up in Dalkey, Co Dublin. “I liked to dress up a lot,” she says, smiling. Her childhood was “spent trailing around in various feather hats and old cocktail dresses discovered in my grandmother’s house.” Hat boxes in particular were always “magical and strange”. Her interest in fashion was further stoked while studying history of art at UCD, in particular by a course on how to date paintings through dress.
The opportunity to pursue a master's degree in the history of dress prompted her move to London. Before joining the VA, she worked at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, on its Dangerous Liaisonsexhibition of 18th-century dress. "That was very interesting. The Met worked with wig-makers to make these incredible wigs, but also used contemporary hats. They had some wonderful Philip Treacy orchid hats."
Hats: An Anthologyby Stephen Jones is a collaboration between the VA and the English milliner. Last month, Jones, working with designer John Galliano, wowed Paris with Dior's haute couture spring/summer collection. It was a fashion feast inspired by the Dutch masters and featuring Jones' silk brushstroke hats. Celebrities queuing up to wear his creations include Beyoncé, Gwen Stefani and Kylie Minogue. Even Philip Treacy studied under him.
The exhibition shows how the classic hat shapes – the bonnet, the beret and the bowler – have reappeared and been reinvented time and time again. Jones and Cullen have raided the archives of museums worldwide and everything from Queen Victoria’s bonnet to an Egyptian fez from about AD 1100 will feature. “When Stephen saw this fez,” recounts Cullen, “his first comment was ‘oh, it’s very 1960s Valentino’.”
Headpieces worn by film stars will also be on display, including a Marlene Dietrich beret covered in black sequins and the straw hat worn by Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Jones discovered the latter at the bottom of a box in the Warner Bros studio in Los Angeles.
The exhibition opens next Tuesday, during London Fashion Week. According to Cullen, the city provided the backdrop for the 1980s revival in millinery thereby inheriting the mantle of “creative capital of hats”.
“There were two forces at work,” she explains. “First, the arrival of Princess Diana. She was a style icon for everyone and, because of royal protocol, she wore hats all the time and that had a huge impact on the industry. At the same time, the New Romantics came on the scene, there was very much an idea of lots of make-up, hats, turbans and drapes, worn by both sexes.
“Suddenly it was a reversal of what happened in the 1960s. Hats were now cool and underground as opposed to part of an established tradition. Because they hadn’t been around for a while, they were used to make dramatic statements. So the resurgence came from a cult youth section, but also from the mainstream with the middle-class lady on the street saying, ‘Wow, Princess Diana, what a great look.’” Cullen describes her own role in the exhibition as “very much a collaboration with Stephen Jones, choosing objects, drawing things together and keeping the momentum going”. When people visit the exhibition, they will see the end product of a long process.
“They don’t necessarily think how the hat got in there. Up to six people may have worked on it, from the curator choosing the hat, to textile conservation, to mount-makers, to technicians installing the hat, to editors editing the label text, to designers designing the set and backdrops.” She pauses for breath. “There are all these different factors and different deadlines for different people.” Not to mention 350 hats from all over the world.
The end, however, is almost in sight. There remains just the small matter of the opening night party. Cullen smiles. “I will of course be wearing a hat, but I have a few things to get on with before I can focus on that! Luckily, I’ll have an expert on hand to advise me.”
Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones, is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London, from February 24th until May 10th, 2009. See www.vam.ac.uk for details.