Living in London for years, as I have, can make one dangerously complacent about the city’s museums. It’s too easy to put off visiting them because they’ve always been there, only to realise that you’ve not been in ages. In an attempt to combat this kind of attrition, my best friend Lauren and I are dedicated to pretending to be tourists on a regular basis. So on this sunny Saturday, we are off to the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington.
Specialising in art and design, the collection at the V&A spans thousands of years: everything from post-classical sculpture to ancient Chinese weapons to twentieth-century food packaging, all housed across 12.5 acres of gallery space in the magnificent Victorian building
Today, Lauren and I are keen to check out the current special exhibition, which runs until the end of May: Hats, An Anthology. The curator is Stephen Jones, one of the world’s most prolific milliners. I have an ambivalent relationship with hats: my head is enormous, and it’s rare that I can ever find one that even remotely fits, which is irritating. But it also makes me sad, as I think that hats are ever so fetching and I would quite like to wear them all of the time. Will the exhibit distress me? I’m a little concerned.
I get told off for trying to take a photo, so you shall just have to take my word for it: the glass cases hold a truly astonishing selection of headgear, from the mundane to the magnificent – my favourite is an intricately-beaded number that looks like a cauliflower. There are famous hats (Darth Vader’s helmet, the mauve pillbox that Carla Bruni wore on her first visit to the UK as French First Lady) and there are functional hats (the style currently worn by British Airways stewardesses, a bicycle helmet almost identical to the one I have at home).
Lauren expresses mild disappointment that Jones did not include more social history in the exhibition. "Why did women stop wearing hats?" she asks, when we go for tea afterwards. "Would we be wearing hats right now, drinking tea?’ But I am delighted to have seen several fanciful creations that are pinned on top of the head, rather than fitting snugly around it, leaving me hopeful that I, too, can sport some proper English lady headgear at the wedding I’m attending this summer. Inspired, I try one on a wispy confection in the gift shop before we leave, but at ninety-five pounds, I decide it’s not for me.
Entrance to the Victoria and Albert Museum is free, with a charge for some special exhibitions.
VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL
