Once off, hats are back on again

Coco Chanel said that "there are certain houses that one cannot enter without a hat — and one must always wear a hat when lunching with people whom one does not know well." A lot has changed since Madame Chanel was the queen of 20th-century fashion, but now that we are experiencing troubled economic times again, hats seem to be coming back.

Milliners such as Philip Treacy and Cozmo Jenks say that they are having their best year ever, while top designers like Marc Jacobs and Luella Bartley sent models down the runways around the world this spring wearing hats with a hint of Depression-era dressing.

But it was the recently-ended exhibition "Hats: An Anthology" at the Victoria and Albert Museum that really helped headwear to make a fashionable comeback. Organized by one of the world's top hat designers, Stephen Jones, the exhibition displayed 300 hats that ranged from an Egyptian Anubis mask dating from 600 BC to a 1950s Balenciaga hat.

Meanwhile, The Guardian presents a spectacular slide-show of the hats worn during Ladies' Day at Ascot yesterday.