A while ago, TWR reader Pat from Wales asked us to look into interesting hats to wear for every day as things got colder. For a while we were a bit stumped. You can pick up smart event hats quite easily and the odd nice hat from brands, but it's surprisingly difficult to see a big selection of easy to wear hats all in one place.
It was fortuitous then, that we were invited to the opening of a new gallery store in London which offers a really generous range of beautifully designed and well priced hats. Hat Gallery MV in Conduit Street is run by the elegant Marly Vroemen, who is out to convince that a new hat will make the world a better place.
The selection of hats starts from around £30 for pretty wool berets, rising to hundreds for the fur/designer/made to order ones but you can pick up a really fabulous design for around the £70 mark.
Marly has hat stores in Germany and Amsterdam and has brought lots of interesting European designers to the shop, including fab trilbys (£198) from Dutch designer Mirjam Nuver which have a neat knitted flap that can be dropped when it gets really cold to keep your ears warm and the prettiest berets from Italian range Inverno, (from £49) which are generous enough for big heads like mine, (berets often look ridiculously perched on me).
Readers might also like to know that Marly and her staff are experts in handling chemo-hair loss issues and has a small room where customers can go and have hat trying on sessions and seek advice in private. If needed Marly can get styles made to order, it takes about two weeks. She stocks the range Parkhurst, which she recommends for hair loss sufferers as the brand is washable and is well designed to cover the hair line stylishly.
Encouraged by a glass of very nice champagne, TWR had a wild time trying on and remembered what fun it is buying hats. The store also sells contemporary sculpture by artists Klaus Baumgärtner and Robert Mentzen, which works well next to the hats, which are mini sculpture themselves.
MV Hat Gallery, 49 Conduit Street, London W1S 2YS, tel 0207 734 9231
A Parkhurst hat, which is entirely washable.
Inverno beanies and berets
The neat trilbey from Mirjam Nuver, with its ear warming flaps
Fur lined ones, in case it gets as cold as last year.
