Xin Nian Kuai Le, Happy (Chinese) New Year

Yep, January 31st marks the end of the year of the Snake and the start of the year of the Horse on this side of the world.

And surely the year of the horse can only be a good thing for milliners as Ladies the world over do an Audrey Hepburn and for one day shrug off their hum drum everyday clothes and don their glad-rags and a superb hat.

But whether my lovely ladies are heading to Ascot, Mussleburgh, Dubai or Melbourne I am often hit with the same question again and again; "Can you make this hat to match my dress".  

This is a topic I have written about before here but I am going to write about it again as I love the miss matched look so much.

If you do a google search for Mother of the bride outfits you find this:

Matchy, matchy, matchy!

Google any of the race days and you get this:

Now don't get me wrong these ladies all look LOVELY but I think they are concentrating too much on the whole outfit rather than making their favourite colour really POP.  The ladies above have obviously spent a lot of time, effort and money on making their outfits match perfectly but in doing so I feel that it reduces their outfit to a block of colour that makes the observer skip over the details and general awesomeness of the individual parts that make the whole look (and in the case of the mother of the bride outfits, add years to the ladies appearance).  

Compare the outfits above with those below; which are you more likely to remember?

 As I have said before, this look is great for pulling out one colour in a very patterned dress or for making a plain coloured (black, white, beige) dress really pop.  It also means that you only have to have one hat which can be worn with different dresses but have a totally different look.

There are some general rules to follow when going for a completely different coloured hat, most of which can be seen above, and that is that your hat should match something in the outfit be it your shoes, bag, statement necklace or even gloves which seem to be making a fashionable come back (YAY).

Your hat doesn't even have to be a totally different colour, even a slightly stronger shade of the same colour can make all the difference.

And of course there are always exceptions to the rules like the hat below which would look awesome no matter what you wore it with.

So here's hoping that the year of the horse isn't just a great year for milliners but a great year for hats being allowed to break free from the rest of the outfit and scream their awesomeness in a bright, non matching roar!

Happy New Year :)