Martin's the tops with hats that are a hit

I operate according to the Veblen principle," Martin Ellis Jones tells me as soon as we've sat down. When I confess to not knowing what that means, he tells me the American economist Thorstein Veblen - author of the Theory of the Leisure Classes - came up with the idea of conspicuous consumption when he realised that for something to be covetable, it simply needed a high price.

There's certainly no denying the opulence of our surroundings - all the walls, and anything even vaguely resembling a flat surface, are festooned in silk silk top hats to be precise - "several hundred of them".

Ellis Jones is proprietor of Hetherington Hats - named after John Hetherington who, legend has it, wore the first top hat in 1797 - which has its showroom (doubling as Ellis Jones's flat) in Chelsea and is a mecca for anybody who wants to be correctly turned out at Ascot, Derby, "and Toffy weddings".

But Ellis Jones, who has just turned 67 and comes from Wales, actually started his working life as an ad-man. "I was offered a job at J Walter Thompson [now one of the biggest agencies in the world] but my mother vetoed that, feeling I was too young for London town, so instead I went to Golley Slater in Cardiff." Ironically, it was her determination that resulted in his doing what he does now. "As a sideline, I started dealing in antique silver so I could get hold of some property.

"I used to come to London every weekend and had two stalls - one in Portobello Road on a Saturday and one in Cutler Street on Sunday, a few stalls down from the Kray twins' father. Ronnie and Reggie visited their dad on alternating Sundays, which was how I encountered them regularly."

When asked what Kray Snr sold, Ellis Jones answers with a twinkle: "Anything he could steal."

But it was when a partner at Golley said "if you really stick to advertising, by the time you're 30 you could be making £5000 a year" that Ellis Jones realised he was in the wrong job, "since I was already earning much more than that from my weekend endeavours".

So in 1966 he moved to London to be a full-time dealer. The move to top hats only came in the Nineties when he supplied Hackett and Lock & Co in St James's ("who always put their 'tips' into other manufacturers' 'tops' rather than make their own"). In 1999, Ellis Jones took out an ad in the Racing Post that read "proper old silk hats; all sizes, sensible prices". A few days later, "a northerner rang me It turned out he was a journalist for the Racing Post, and the paper ran an article about my hats after which it all took off".

This is no idle boast, as a glance down his list of clients makes immediately clear; customers range from such stalwarts of the turf as the Duke of Devonshire, the jockey Frankie Dettori, "the voice of racing" Sir Peter O'Sullevan and bookie Victor Chandler to Maurice, Lord Saatchi, Damon Albarn of Blur and the former Eastenders actress Tamzin Outhwaite "who needed a hat for her musical Sweet Charity".

Lord Saatchi's sale was one of the hardest Ellis Jones has had to conduct. "It was a work of art," he says. "He'd written in advance to arrange an appointment and his letter stated 'Lord Saatchi needs a top hat; he takes a 7⅝'. Well, he arrived at 6.30 on the agreed day and I could see he was more like a 7⅛. Anyhow, he tried on a hat and said that he had to show his wife [the novelist Josephine Hart, who died this month] who was waiting in a people carrier outside. They came back together and Lord Saatchi said he wanted to buy the hat so I told him it cost £1850. His wife immediately said: 'Oh, we can't afford that', so I let him have it for £1500.

"Ten days later, I read in the paper that he had just sold a company for £386 million." The cheque (a photocopy, that is) dated June 12, 2000 now hangs in a frame in Ellis Jones's flat under a letter from Lord Saatchi that reads: "Hetherington Hats, thank you so much for your help on Friday with the hat. The hat was a hit... Maurice."