Stephen Jones Rides a Rainbow into Spring With Hats for Every Hour

STAR POWER: Stephen Jones unleashed a wave of color for spring 2026, with a collection inspired by the changing sky from dawn until after dusk.

Called “A Rainbow in Curved Air” after the trippy 1969 album from the composer Terry Riley, it featured a peach hat with a visor, “that casts a golden shadow,” and another with a tuft of pink feathers and a silk satin eye mask, with Muppet-like embroidered eyelids. Jones worked midday shades of orange and red into striped or embellished sun hats, and also set out to create “the ultimate blue hat.”

The result was a conceptual style shaped like “the outline of a bicorn,” done in marine blue with a feathery flourish at the top. For evening, Jones looked to Umm Kulthum, the late Egyptian singer and film actress who adored scarves, for inspiration.

He created a delicate tiara with a crescent moon and draped it with sheer scarves dotted with diamanté stars shaped into every zodiac formation.

“I wanted to show that fashion can be something jolly, entertaining – and inspirational,” said the designer during a walk-through of the new collection at his Covent Garden shop and showroom.

The sun never sets on Jones, who is also one of the stars of “Blitz: The Club That Shaped the 80s,” an exhibition that opened over the weekend at London’s Design Museum. The show looks at the creativity that flowed from the club, and its impact on popular culture, from fashion and music, to film, art and design.

The scene launched the careers of myriad “Blitz kids” – musicians including Spandau Ballet, Boy George and Marilyn, as well as Game of Thrones costume designer Michele Clapton, plus Jones.

The milliner said that, for him, the exhibition has been a “surreal experience,” adding that he can’t believe the club has become part of London history. He’ll be back at the museum on Tuesday, Nov. 4, in conversation with Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, to talk about the colorful old days.