Hitting A Hat Trick

Inside Royal Milliners Lock & Co., Who Have Been Making Hats For More Than 300 Years, And How They Deal With Fat Heads.

- Hindol Sengupta

ONE CAN ALMOST HEAR the trundling wooden carriages and the clippetyclop of horse hooves as one walks down St. James’s Street—home to the ghosts of gentlemen past and their great clubs, Brooks’s, Boodle’s, Whites; home to D.R. Harris, chemists for more than 200 years, as well as the aristocratic bespoke shoemaker, John Lobb; and the Old Curiosity Shop-style home of Lock & Co., the world’s oldest hat maker, at 6, St. James’s Street.

The door of the shop, the one that is used even today to enter the four-storeyed establishment, has been in continuous use since 1676, the year when, on a newly minted street in the heart of London in the reign of King Charles II, hatter Robert Davis opened his shop. The interesting thing is Davis’ shop was not at 6, St. James’s Street but a few doors away. Number 6 was first a coffee shop run by a man called George Lock who specialised in importing the finest coffee, chocolate, and tobacco from around the world. Then in 1747, the grandson of George Lock, James Lock, trained as a hatter and started as an apprentice to Charles Davis, the son of Robert Davis. In 1759, the two families came together when James Lock married Mary, the daughter of Robert Davis, and the duo moved to 6, St. James’s, and re-crafted it into the Lock & Co. hat store which is what it remains till today. On the way, it picked up, among other customers, two royal warrants—from the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh.