The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2020 - Issue 27

Jada Brookes attended the London Hat Week Exhibition Catwalk Show at Shangri- La Hotel in London which showed a collection of hat designs by milliners from around the world. bite fashion To the Future and Back The London Hat Week Exhibition Catwalk Show L ooking at the Shard, the UK’s tallest building at 309.6 metres, it’s almost hard to believe this striking building is a vertical city within itself where people can live and relax. It comprises of world-class offices, award-winning restaurants, the 5-star Shangri-La Hotel, exclusive residences, and the highest viewing gallery. It was in this building the London Hat Week Exhibition Catwalk Show took place at the Shangri-La Hotel in March, days before the lockdown was imposed. This prestigious hotel, the first in the UK, occupies floors 34-52 and boasts 200 luxuriously appointed rooms, along with breathtaking views of London and the hotel’s signature 5-star service. For those who stay here, there is a wide array of amenities including a gourmet delicatessen, international restaurant, iconic bar, and premium event spaces and services. Guests can also take advantage of the gym and infinity pool facilities featuring panoramic views of the London skyline. Arriving on the 35th floor, we had to take the wooden stairs down to the lower level where the event was being held. With a glass of bubbly in hand, I admired the amazing décor of surrounding wooden brown panels, large chandelier lights, cushioned carpet, and padded armchairs and chairs. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, you can see breathtaking views of London’s iconic buildings and monuments including the Walkie-Talkie, Tower 42, with Tower Bridge on the right and Elephant & Castle in the distance. This year’s London Hat Week Exhibition Catwalk Show enti- tled ‘To the Future and Back’ precedes the exhibition taking place later this year (which was originally scheduled for April 2020 but postponed due to Covid-19). It featured 50 inno- vative and beautiful hats made by milliners from around the world, all inspired by different eras, in one place. A few years ago, the year 2020 was perceived as fictitious, so the intention was to invite hat lovers to time travel to the future and back into the past with creativity in hat design. A selection of milliners was given the ‘Future’ theme to show their vision of the future in their hat designs. Each piece was uniquely inspired by an arrangement of ideas such as sci-fi, high-tech, environmentally friendly, imagined worlds, and 3D printers. This included Austrian milliner Paul Marcher who found inspiration for his hat Xenia, made with sharp pieces of black mirror foil, from the typical hairstyles of ancient Greek and sensed that future hats would be in this hairstyle with a special twist. Monique Lee Hylands-White, founder of the X Terrace fashion platform, Monique Lee Millinery, and curator of The Great Hat Exhibition 2015-2020 included her hat designs in the catwalk. The inspiration for her Shangri-La at The Shard hat came from renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano’s strik- ing vertical city and the mystical utopia Shangri-La, where she imagined people will live isolated from the world happily in the future. This is perhaps the reason why the event was held here as a representation of this idea. With the audience facing the large-scale windows, the models walked the collection of hat designs in groups of three. All of them were fascinating with the wild and creative imagination greeting our eyes. The Retro theme allowed the other milli- ners to show the glorious eras of the past when hats were the