Hats, Hatchards and a High Street dinner

We thought we would go to the Darwin Exhibition at the Natural History Museum and set off for South Ken only to find that the queue to get in – just to the Museum, was down the steps, through the garden, passed the wildlife garden, out of the gate and up Queens Gate. It would probably take a couple of hours just to get to the front door. So, we decided to visit the V&A, next door, where the crowds were less dense!
Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones was our chosen exhibition, and we nearly got in for free with our Art Fund cards. It is an exhibition reflecting one by Cecil Beaton in the 1971 – in fact the V&A’s first fashion show. This exhibition is a collaboration between V&A and Stephen Jones, world famous milliner. He has been producing hat collections twice a year for twenty years as well as working with many famous fashion houses and designers. I find this quite interesting as Grannie trained as a milliner in Manchester in the 1930s at a well known milliners, Jones of Manchester.
The exhibition is wonderful, with hats in displayed in ‘shop windows’, grouped in topics such as Inspiration, Creation, The Salon and The Client. The displays included some very old hats – the oldest we saw being and apprentice’s hat from the 1550s, as well as Stephen Jones creations from this year. We saw some beautiful creations as well as some weird ones, but all were great fun and beautifully displayed. In the centre of the exhibition there is milliner’s workshop with shelves stacked with the tools of the trade, half made and finished hats. The visitor can see into this workshop through several windows, each giving a slightly different view – the wooden heads, the sewing machine, boxes of feathers, flowers and other accessories overflowing the work tables. There are hats you would wear to Ascot Ladies Day and others that graced the King’s Road in the 60s; Queen’s hats, star’s hats and hats for you and me! A really fascinating collection, and yes, I’m sorry we missed Mr Darwin, but I’m not sorry we saw this great exhibition.
To continue our ‘day out’, we made our way to Green Park tube station and walked down Piccadilly. Our aim was to browse around Hatchards Bookshop, but first we came to Fortnum and Mason and who can resist a look in the windows, and we just had to go inside.


After wandering around the food, we made our way upstairs to look at all those amazing articles one never knew you needed! But sense prevailed and nothing was bought! However, we came across a stand of Stephen Jones hats, which were duly photographed, as that was strictly banned in the V&A.


There is also a display advertising the exhibition on the staircase.


So Hatchards came next and we couldn’t resist a copy of The Return of John MacNab, having a John Buchan fan with us.
We had consumed most of the day, so we made our way to the train home and walked up the High Street from the station to enjoy a glass of wine in the bar of The Farriers before we had dinner in their bistro - Upstairs@the Farriers. It was a lovely way to end such a jolly day out.