It may be surprising that the Palais Galliera, one of the world’s foremost fashion museums, hasn’t staged an exhibition on hats in 40 years. What’s not surprising: that it’s deemed the milliner Stephen Jones worthy of this honor. “Stephen Jones: Chapeaux d’Artiste,” which opens on Saturday as Paris buzzes with people in town for the twin Paris Art Basel and Design Miami Paris fairs, puts the English hat maker’s boundless imagination on full display.
But it also reveals how Jones’s mastery for millinery has run parallel to a thrilling life he cultivated from the time he was a student. Moving to London, spending days at St. Martins and nights at the Blitz club meant he became part of a cool, counterculture scene, which in turn helped open doors for him in Paris where he was soon welcomed into the hallowed circles of high fashion.
In the darkened galleries, enlivened with a disco ball (apparently a first for the museum) and with music compiled from his New Romantic heyday, Jones’s hats are lit with dramatic effect, the whole experience demonstrating how he’s fueled by the renewable creativity of his craft. Of the 400 works in the exhibition 170 are hats. There are dozens of major fashion looks that correspond to Jones’s chapeaux by leading designers over the decades, plus the preparatory sketches, photos that reveal his early sense of style, an archive of show invitations, and personal effects, including a scrapbook of Queen memorabilia (the monarch, not .