If you really want to look au courant this season, do as the pioneers did and throw on a bonnet. Today, V magazine unveiled a shoot devoted to haute versions of Kirsten the American Girl doll’s preferred headwear. Photographer Nick Knight and stylist Amanda Harlech spent two years on the project, which indicates quite the fervent commitment to bonnets. Said Harlech, “A bonnet shields the gaze from the emotional ligaments that might engage or discern too much. Or maybe it draws you in, like a funnel, like a frame, demanding penetration.” Yeah, it could really go either way.
Knight and Harlech recruited an array of designers and style stars to take on the item and describe their creation in a series of loosely connected adjectives. Daphne Guinness’s is “whimsical frail decorative doll-like,” while milliner Stephen Jones went for “historic and aristocratic Vicky Pollard.” (For non-anglophiles, Pollard is a slovenly, chav-y character on the program Little Britain.) Thom Browne’s shuttlecock-shaped bonnet (“Summer American preppy fun sporty”) makes an appearance. Sarah Burton submitted one that is “cocooned sheltered concealed empowered subverted,” while Iris van Herpen, not to be outdone, contributed a “lion’s mane rainbow dance mask.” Wonder what Ma Ingalls would have to say about all of this.
Left: Daphne Guinness; Right: Johanna O’Hagan
Left: Noel Stewart; Middle: Stephen Jones; Right: Jonathan Anderson
Left: Franc Fernandez; Right: Thom Browne
Left: Oxford English Dictionary, Angels the Costumiers; Right: Sarah Burton
Left: Aganovich; Right: Eamonn Hughes
