On the third floor of Jessica McCormack’s extraordinary, luxury jewellery townhouse on Mayfair’s Carlos Place, Mr Tony, Fenwick’s occasion hat specialist for 22 years, is squeaking, “Just beautiful, darling!”
My mother is trying a hat for Royal Ascot, and while once the hot spot would have been Fenwick’s sprawling hat department in its Bond Street department store, its closure in February has seen it morph into a purple-walled, trunk-show-style pop-up to meet the continued demand. While event-goers might be happy to pick their dress online, “trying on your hat in-store, with your dress or at the very least a picture of it, is essential,” Mr Tony says. It’s for this reason it has found “a small space, but home”, joining a number of other temporary millinery hotspots which have cropped up in central London for May and June.
