In a previous post, we looked at an enlargement of the ‘London’ hat from Jones’s Travelogue collection which introduces the first theme of the exhibition. The second theme, Science, explores Jones’s fascination for what he calls the space age and his predilection for science and technology, subjects he already excelled in as a youngster at school. For Jones, science is also about shapes and volumes, barying from a simple line to complex cell structures.

“I am a typical product of my generation. I’m a child of the 1960s. I always wanted to be a spaceman. The space race was on television and exciting. That was the new world. That was the future. People really did talk about the future. At school I was good in a weird mixture of things. I was really good at physics, my favourite subject, and art. The more esoteric and complex it is, the more I love it. And actually that is what I do. It is all about building a bridge. It is about physics. It’s about imagining a volume, or a tension, or a colour and making it reality.”

The hat that introduces this theme is an enlargement of Soho, a classic trilby made of shiny vacuum-formed polyethylene, from Jones’s Millinery Computer collection. Soho a true classic in his oeuvre and its shape has since been reintroduced in various later collections. Jones believes it is an exceptionally pure form, in which he tried to reduce the form to its essence, so that it looks like a sketch for a hat.

The designers represented in this group include Claude Montana and Azzedine Alaïa, who share Jones’s love for form and tailoring, as well as Giles and Walter Van Beirendonck, who, like Jones, cherish a fascination for technology. This subgroup looks more closely at highly diverse forms, volumes and graphic patterns, beginning with the purest of all forms: the line.