The hat's back

Sometimes a trend comes along, as if out of nowhere, and hits you right on the head. It doesn't filter down from the catwalk, it filters up from what people are wearing a lot of, and right now that's a hat. Particularly the bucket, or the bucket verging on a trilby, fashioned from cord or velvet.

Look, there goes Gwyneth in a dark red trilby with a matching jacket, there's Madonna in an orange felt Trilby and there's Britney, Christina (Aguilera), Alicia (Keys) and Mary (J Blige), all in velvet bucket/trilby hats and looking real good.

Until recently, I always used to feel a bit weird and eccentric when I wore a hat. "That's the thing," says milliner extraordinaire Philip Treacy in a reprimanding tone, "People have been encouraged to think that hat wearing is for eccentrics; you know, the kind of women that like to wear hamburgers on their head at Ascot, or the older generation, but that has never been true. It's only now, thanks to MTV, that the young generation are wearing them, and realising how good they look."

Treacy should know: many of the hats on MTV are his. Alicia Keys wore one of his trilbies throughout her recent tour, while Mary J Blige ordered 20 for her tour, and has just ordered some more. "She came in, tried on hats, looked at herself in the mirror and said, 'How good do I look?' I love that," Treacy says.

The bucket is "the unifying youth hat," explains Stephen Jones. Jones, a hat genius who does amazing work for John Galliano and Dior among others, is a keen hat observer and has charted this trend.

"It started with the surf dudes in California wearing fishermen's hats, and the hip- hop fraternity wearing Kangol and Stussy. Now they are everywhere. What I like is

that they look equally good on men and women, and they are easy to store - you can roll them up and put them in your bag."

To get the true measure of whether a trend is underground or overground, there is only one place to go: Topshop. Walk into its jumbo accessories floor at Oxford Circus, and the first things you see are tables and tables of hats, and girls posing and pouting in front of the mirrors, looking rather fabulous.

"Hats make you look good, it's as simple as that," says Treacy., "They add mystery to the face, and enhance the features. I've yet to meet someone who doesn't look good in a hat." I think that might be a challenge.