A Retrospective – Chapeaux d’Artiste
“Mama, are we really going to see just a hat exhibition?” My daughter, with her Disney eyelashes, implores me incredulously. It takes me a beat to reply. The cherubic effect from her naive, knitted eyebrows still stuns me into muteness for a second or two. “Stephen Jones, chèrie. We are going to see a Stephen Jones retrospective.” I clarify, liberally.
A light rain had broken out and we briskly walked to the ornate gates of the Palais Galliera, a symmetrical, spherical monument, with pale stone columns lining up the left and right sides as if in a dignified salute to its visitors. Cradled in between is the palais itself, a museum that has devoted its existence to preserving French historical costume, exhibiting contemporary clothing and showcasing avant-garde fashion. There would not have been an arena more commiserate as the Palais Galliera for Stephen Jones. As my daughter absorbed on that mercurial Parisian afternoon, Stephen Jones is costume, is contemporary, is avant-garde.
The Chapeaux d’Artiste exhibition envelopes you in deep shades of velvet that easily train your focus on the surrounding glass-encased sculptures that are bathed with the warmth from amber spotlights. The haute mode (the hat’s equivalent to haute couture) pieces appear to be primarily this, sculptures. They are faceted, layered, embellished but concurrently they invoke suggestions of nonchalance, insouciance and silken comfort. But much like the art of sculpture-making, the viewer immediately succumbs to the effects of this trompe l’oeil. Effortlessness seems to pirouette before us but indeed what underpins this illusion is technical skill, much like a suspension bridge. One of Stephen Jones’ creations was the incarnation of every French truism; it is anchored with a red scarf whose ends were stocking suspender straps, followed by a slender ivory band that fits just so below the hairline, it rises up to a blue pompom that sprouts with a cigarette at whose embers’ tip holds a silver coil with crystals- Vive le Sexy!
Much that was showcased throughout the exhibition was the windfall of creativity from the milliner’s years in Paris. The virility of the dialogue he had amongst houses of haute couture such as Schiaparelli & Christian Dior, with fashion legends Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler, are palpable all throughout the show. It is more than a visual feast. What transpires between prodigies of incessant creation are products that assail your epidermis, bringing about what can only be described as a tingling sensation. And there were times when tingling begot electric. I was zapped a handful of moments during our visit but this one specific hat, a rendering of the Eiffel Tower, like lightning, it knocked the ambivalence off of my daughter with its beauty. Stephen Jones described the intention behind this silken and tulle piece, a desire to recreate the effect one experienced of seeing the Eiffel Tower for the very first time, from a moving car, craning one’s neck in an effort to take it all in before the monument is whisked away from your field of vision. A diaphanous vision, one that most humans will remember the first time seeing. What a triumph this hat is. With black satin silk replicating iron and pink tulle portraying the spray of light from the top, it is a gossamer impression of the Eiffel Tower, made to look nebulous, a miasma of the symbol of the City of Light.
With over 200 hats in the exhibition, it is more than a celebration of this decorative accessory that one fears is fading from wardrobes in the twenty-first century, Chapeaux d’Artiste can be experienced almost like coming upon a shrine dedicated to an ornamental object that has inspired exuberance in yesteryears. The onus is upon us; hats on or hats off? Vive le chapeau!
