Where to buy a handmade hat in London
Where can you buy a handmade hat in London? Four routes, in descending order of how much of the hat is made for you. Direct from a millinery house, where the piece is blocked to your head and coloured to your outfit. From a department store concession, where you choose from what is in the room that day. From a specialist hat shop, which carries several makers and can often order in. Or hire, which is the right answer more often than the trade admits.
Which one you want depends on how much time you have and whether the fit matters more than the choosing.
Direct from a millinery house
London has a working millinery trade, most of it in small ateliers rather than shops. Some houses have a studio you can visit by appointment, some work entirely by consultation and video call, and almost all of them will remake an existing design in your colour.
You get blocking to your own head measurement, colour matched by hand to a cutting of your fabric, and the ability to change the shape because of how your face is built. It takes one to four weeks for a remake, longer for a full commission. Go here when the occasion matters, the outfit is already decided, or nothing you have tried on has sat right.
The thing people do not realise is that this route is often no more expensive than a good department store hat, because you are paying the maker rather than the maker plus the retail margin.
A department store concession
The large London stores carry millinery, particularly from spring onwards, and staff are generally knowledgeable about shape and proportion.
You get a room full of hats to try on in one afternoon, and immediate purchase. It takes a day. Go here when your event is soon, you want to try many shapes quickly, or you do not yet know what suits you.
Trying things on is genuinely valuable and worth an afternoon even if you buy elsewhere afterwards. Take a photograph of yourself in each one, because a hat looks different in a mirror and in a picture, and the pictures are what you will keep.
A specialist hat shop
London has hat shops carrying several makers, with staff who fit hats every day. Many will order a shape in, or put you in touch with the maker for a colour change.
You get range across makers and real fitting expertise. It takes immediate off the shelf, or a few weeks to order. Go here when you want independent advice rather than one house's point of view.
Hire
Hiring an occasion hat is normal, sensible and quietly common.
Go here when the hat is for one event, you will never wear that colour again, or the budget is better spent on the outfit. There is no snobbery worth having about this. A hired hat that suits you looks far better than a bought one that does not.
How far ahead to start
Royal Ascot, June. Start in March. Every milliner in London is busy from March to June and the good blocks are in constant use. A summer wedding. Six weeks for a remake, longer if the outfit fabric is not yet decided. Mother of the bride. Start once the dress fabric exists, because the colour is matched to it. Three months out is comfortable. Winter and Christmas. Quieter season, two to three weeks is usually fine.
What to bring, whichever route you take
A photograph of the outfit, and a cutting of the fabric if you can get one. A photograph of yourself in a hat you have liked before. Your head measurement, taken with a soft tape one centimetre above the ears and level across the forehead. And the date, because that determines everything about what is possible.
Buying from Maria Monica London
We are a millinery house rather than a shop. Every piece is made by hand in the London atelier, each is one of a kind, and anything on the site can be remade in another colour and blocked to your own head measurement in one to four weeks.
Consultations are by appointment at the atelier or on a video call, with colour matched against a cutting of your outfit fabric. There is no fee for a first conversation, and if the honest answer is that you should hire something for this particular event, you will be told that.
