FUN STUFF: Hats, Caps and More Incredible Toppers at the Peabody!

By Pamela Burke/October 23, 2012

If you’ve followed TWE’S FUN STUFF, you know we love shoes and the more exotic the better.  And you also know that we have a fascination with handbags like Chanel’s gigantic hula hoop purse.  But it may not be clear yet how we adore hats!

We are happy to report that the Peabody Essex Museum is currently featuring an exhibit of more than 250 glorious chapeaux organized by milliner extraordinaire Stephen Jones.

They are wild; they are beautiful.  They are bold and they are brilliant.  This “anthology” or garden of hats, as Jones calls it, is a combination of items from the historical hat collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (they have nearly 5,000!) and his own designs. 

Celebrities love Jones’ creations with the likes of Madonna, Diana Ross, Boy George, Grace Jones and Barbra Streisand wearing his artistic concoctions  since he began his business in the early 80’s.

Who wouldn’t love to wear ballet shoes perched on a hat in Jones’ “Pass de deux” design of 1982!

 

 

 

 

And if you’re in the mood for something tiny, how about his “Honey” hat.

This petite wonder is rather “Peter Panesque” in its pixieness.

To get back to shoes for a moment, where would you ever see a surrealistic inverted shoe hat the likes of this Elsa Schiaparelli design?  It’s one she created with Salvador Dali and is highly unlikely to be worn on a foot.

 

If you’re more interested in a blue and red feather and cube combination, you will love Noel Stewart’s imaginative “Stacked Feather Cube” piéce de resistance.

 

 

Regardless of which hat you prefer or if you prefer something much simpler, you can’t help but applaud the creativity of these hat designers.  We thank Stephen Jones for putting together this amazing “anthology” and hope to see it in person one day.

As he told Christopher Muther at the Boston Globe, “Women may throw their clothes away after a few seasons, but they don’t throw away their hats…they’re like their security blankets.  I want to create a security blanket they’ll always feel good about.”  These are surely some amazing security blankets!

This exhibit will be on view at the Peabody Essex Museum from Sept. 8, 2012-Feb. 3, 2012.   There’s a neat book on their website, Stephen Jones & the Accent of Fashion, on his life and work….and many more hats to see!