I like my hat

I did something I haven't done for a very long time, and went to London to go shopping for clothes.  Normally I buy clothes by mail order, supplemented by the odd foray into Colchester.  It astounds some of my friends that I even buy shoes by post, without trying them on, but that's generally fine, once you've worked out which companies make shoes for people with feet shaped like yours.  Boden shoes are for long, thin feet, which is hopeless for me (but they are catering to the upper middle classes, and as Ogden Nash put it 'This English woman is so refined, She has no bosom and no behind').  Toast's shoes usually fit, and The Natural Shoe Store will even give advice over the phone, accurate so far, about which styles come up large and which small.  If they don't fit you can always send them back, and it's almost easier to decide that at your leisure in the privacy of your own bedroom than with the shoe shop assistant hovering over you.   However, today I wanted to buy hats, and it is pretty much essential to try hats on, except for woollen beanies.

We are going to our nephew's wedding in the summer, and I have purchased a new outfit.  Dr Johnson warned us to beware enterprises requiring new clothes, and for the twelve years since leaving the City I have managed with the supply of smart clothes I possessed when I left.  We don't go to many social events where one has to dress up very much, and I bought some nice things when I was in possession of a fund manager's salary, though never very many of them, because we didn't go to many events that required dressing up then either.  But I had to admit that, after twelve years, the stock of party clothes was looking shabbier than it used to, and that our friends and relations had seen them all quite a few times, one way and another.  So I bought a dress, not so smart I'd never wear it again, but smart enough, as long as I save its first outing until the wedding, and a jacket, ditto.  (The jacket when it arrived turned out to be delightful, but with horrible buttons, so I bought some buttons as well while I was in London.  I am astounded at the price of button thread, and grateful to John Lewis for employing people in their haberdashery department who could remember whether the thread was supposed to be lighter or darker than the buttons (darker is the correct answer).

To go with the dress and the jacket I decided I should have a hat.  Post-City I'm not in the Philip Treacy league, but John Lewis seemed within my scope.  I warmed up by buying the replacement buttons, then found the hat department, which was full of grim faced ladies trying on hats as if the success of their offspring's nuptials depended on it, and not enough mirrors.  I joined the throng.  I have extremely thick and curly hair, so finding any hat large enough to go on my head rather than perch uneasily on the top is always a challenge.  (Alternatively I could look at it as simplifying the hat buying process by eliminating half of the potential choices at the outset).  I worked my way round the hat display, discovering which ones wouldn't go on my head, which made the question of whether or not they suited me academic.  I also discovered that the light coloured, wide brimmed hats uniformly made me look like a mushroom, while black seemed rather funereal for a summer wedding.  John Lewis mainly offer hats in neutral shades, but that was fine, given that so is the rest of my outfit.  I toyed with the idea of a fascinator, trying on the ones like miniature cocktail hats, and then a very perky number made mostly out of black feathers that wobbled whenever I moved.  I rather liked that, but wasn't sure whether it made me look like an aunt or more like a burlesque dancer.  More pragmatically, I was concerned that wearing a metal clip round my skull all through a June day while drinking a glass or two of champagne would probably give me a headache.

Eventually I settled for a sort of asymmetric attenuated top hat with a swooping bow, in a swirly pattern of black and natural straw.  In terms of the cost per time worn, it will probably represent the worst value of any garment I purchase this decade.  It would take every unattached person I know to get married and ask me to the wedding, and for the Systems Administrator to take me to a ladies day at the races, and for me to be inexplicably invited to a Buckingham Palace garden party, to bring the cost per wear down in line with the rest of my wardrobe.  But it is a nice hat.

Then, encumbered with the hat box, I set out to find a cardigan to match a dress, a Sisyphan task so futile I won't bore you with the details.  Buying clothes by mail order has a lot to recommend it.