Lock & Co Hatters // Discover Britain

Lock & Co Hatters, No 6 St James Street in London. Established in 1676, which makes it the oldest hat shop in the world and the oldest shop in London still in existence. I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon there photographing both the shop and it's retail manager Michael Hagon. The torturous looking device in the fourth image is a Conformateur, which is a French designed and patented tool used to measure the head size and shape of a person, so that a custom made hat can be built by a hat maker. The Conformateur produces a paper template unique to each subject's head measurements and Lock & Co have a lot of historically interesting figures head templates framed on their walls, from Churchill to Chaplin. Well worth stopping by if you happen to be passing.