@dior Hats! is the latest exhibition to be unveiled at the Musée Christian Dior in Granville. Taking you through 70 years and 200 individual pieces of Dior’s immortal and inimitable headwear creations spanning the end of World War Two and the return of the Belle Époque, the romance of Haute Couture with Marc Bohan, the sartorial apostasy known as punk with John Galliano, the renaissance of Raf Simons, and now the fearless heroine under current creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri. The result is the visual equivalent and System’s reinterpretation of one of Chrisian Dior’s sayings: If there is no civilization without hats, then there are no hats worth considering without the house of Dior. Of the vitrines on display lies the immeasurable body of work belonging to prolific (an adjective he humbly opts not to describe himself as) milliner Stephen Jones. Once part of Steven Strange’s London ‘Blitz Kids’ in the late 70s and early 80s, Jones was thrown out of the nest by mentor at the time, Shirley Hex, no stranger to the world of millinery having also taught the likes of Irish hat designer, Philip Treacy. Hex told Jones that he had to make his own way, forge his own path and conquer his own style. This led to his fascination with the New Romantics age post-punk and the creations of his frivolous fez’s segueing to Jones’ pre-Dior work under cult figures and labels such as Fiorucci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, and of course transitioning into the blurred and blackened mainstream of Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons. One could say that Stephen Jones has fitted more characters than a Martin Scorsese score. His now remarkable 25 years at Dior redefines timelessness in an industry that can often appear unkind in commemorating longevity. Having created for the John Galliano, Raf Simons, and now Maria Grazia Chiuri tenures at Dior respectively, the one constant that remains is that the master milliner has never run out of ideas.