With the season of Ascot and summer weddings upon us, one of the key questions which image consultants and image professionals receive when taking clients shopping, is which hat should I wear? Our Events Director Lynne Nicoll always advises to her clients to go with their intuition as she did in on one memorable occasion.
My wedding hat was amazing. My heart knew the moment my eyes saw it that I had to have it. I don’t normally have a fetish for hats but something strange happened on that autumn day. Perhaps the wind changed direction ….. I’m not sure but it did lead to an odd chain of events which lasted for many months and years afterwards.
I was attending the TFIC 2006 conference where I had been invited to sit on the “Questions and answers panel”, in an afternoon session, with two alternative Image Training Providers. During the morning I took advantage of attending the other presentations. The one that turned out to be the most interesting was entitled “Hats”.
As I had an important family wedding in December I thought it most appropriate to attend and see what I could learn about wearing hats. Being step-mother of the groom means putting in the effort and I really wanted to make sure that I contributed well towards this happy day. Especially as I believe that the love-match between my step son and his then wife-to-be had the potential to be a successful marriage.
The person giving the talk was not only in the business of renting hats but she was also an Image Consultant – her presentation was brilliant. I was fascinated by the amount that could be learnt about hats and hat wearing.
But my facilitation was exchanged for sheer lust as she produced this hat…..dramatic to say the least. It looked a bit like the Sydney Opera House. It was the type of hat that I would dream about wearing. The style was perfect for my outfit as it would follow the structured lines of the dress. It would make just the right impact I wanted to achieve. The only problem being that it was orange….I don’t do orange especially a grungy orange and it would clash with the pinkie red outfit I was making.
However I could not take my eyes off this hat. Every time it was picked up and put on someone else’s head in the demonstration I found myself thinking “Hope she doesn’t’ want that hat”. I couldn’t understand my behaviour. Possessing a hat in a colour I would never wear! Possessing a hat I hadn't even tried on!! Bizarre!! I must admit that most of the big decisions I have made in my life have been based on gut feelings and although they had seemed irrational at the time, they had usually turned out to be the right ones. I tried to suppress these thoughts by consciously telling myself that, “This is only a hat for goodness sake and that there must be some simple answer to the need to wear or possibly want to own this most unlikely hat”.
At the end of the session I was one of the first on the stage – making a grab at the hat just in case anyone else got there first. Two others had also spied it and eyed it up in my hands. Casually I walked up to the speaker and asked her about the hat. “Great style for you – but not your colour”.
I knew that ……reluctantly I put the hat down. But of course I noted everyone else who put it on and listened to the comments. “That hat really suits you” – “Gosh it looks fantastic on you” and so on. And I must admit it did look quite amazing on two of the woman who tried it on.
I found myself glued to the stand. It was as if my head was telling me one thing and my feet and heart were doing another. As soon as the speaker was not busy, I went up to her and asked, “Do you have another hat like that in another colour that I could rent off you?” She turned to me and said, “Good gracious no – that is a one off. Designed by Philip Treacy. They cost hundreds of pounds to buy”.
This made my irrational desire even stronger as I picked up the hat again, fingering the feather that was so casually placed across the brim. My head spoke to me again “You couldn’t afford such a hat. Too many other things to buy for this wedding”.
I stayed to watch a few others try on the hat for a few more minutes and then as I was just at the point of going back to my seat the speaker announced loudly that she was selling all the hats off cheaply as she was giving up her hat hiring business. Before the words had fully sunk in, my fingers had curled themselves around the brim of the hat once again. I held it tightly. My head was shouting “Be rational” and my heart was screaming “Be flippant”.
I once again approached the speaker “How much for this one”. At first when she said £45 I thought I had heard wrong but my mouth seemed to find their own words “Great, I’ll have it”. “Have it!” my head said “You don’t have that amount of money in your purse and you don’t have your cheque book here and she won’t have a credit card machine with her!” “Maybe”, the irrational side of me said, “The conference Centre would give me some cash off my card”.
