This article is taken from the February 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

The King’s Road has seen some sights. Once a private highway so royalty need not queue en route to Kew, by the sixties Chelsea’s high street had metamorphosed into a mecca for modish counterculture. Skimpy skirts and kinky boots electrified the locale as Mitford and Mosley types moved out and Mary Quant and Malcolm McLaren moved in.

You may not have heard of them, but they know everybody — which means they will know somebody who knows you

But little lasts for long and the march of the neo-gentry has seen the scene shift again; the strip is once more the home of the moneyed, if not always the connected, classes. I say little lasts for long because there remain a few fixed points in this ever-changing world. Two of them are Martin Ellis Jones and his partner Alexandra Shanahan.

You may not have heard of them, but they know everybody — which means they will know somebody who knows you. They have terrific tales to tell about the famous and the notorious, from the fifties and Robin Maugham, through swinging London and Lord Lucan right into the modern age.

As old school tie yielded to new wave, they remain walking, talking encyclopaedias of people, parties and playgrounds, past and present. Based in their apartment near the King’s Road, Martin and Alexandra have been dealing in traditional top hats for the last half century. Their home is a little lost world of silken headgear, old silverware and eclectic artwork, all jostling for attention.

The hats have also to compete with the perpetual procession of friends who “drop in”, for Alexandra’s hospitality is legendary. My strong suggestion to you: if you do ever drop by, do not attempt to drive away!

I have spent many languorous, laughter-filled evenings in their company. But the occasion I remember most vividly was one lunchtime a decade or more ago when I introduced a friend (and fellow MP) to Martin and Alexandra for the purpose of purchasing a topper. The business end of the day concluded, my friend and I were then invited to join them at their regular Tuesday lunch table at the Chelsea Ivy.

We took a cab to carry us the 800 yards to its front door and dove into the rarefied melee of the rear terrace. There, waiting to greet us, were a smiling former marchioness, the late former Grand Prix racer Mike Taylor and his lovely wife Elaine, herself the former Mrs Stirling Moss.

If the ex-marchioness was charming, Mike Taylor was charisma in corporeal form. Clad in pink silk shirt, set off with a snazzy neckerchief, and dark velvet coat, he seemed impervious to the warmth of the late spring day. Indeed, he radiated bonhomie. We all fell to talking about times past and the people he and Martin had known.

Trying to show off, I tossed in a couple of characters including international playboy, polo player and petrol-head, Porfirio Rubirosa, whom I had always wanted to meet. Needless to say, Taylor had known Rubi. “I remember the night he died, in Paris back in the sixties. Parked his car in a tree after a party and broke his neck.”

I said I had read all about the tragedy and that if only he had been wearing a seatbelt the man might have survived. “Yes,” Taylor snapped back, “If he had worn his seatbelt, he would have lived,” then leaning closer he said, chuckling, “but if he had worn his seatbelt, he would not have been Porfirio Rubirosa!”

I imagine he told that story a thousand times. Mike Taylor is now gone but Martin Ellis Jones soldiers on, steadfast and unchanging and cheerful.

He and Alexandra are still selling silk toppers. So if you are looking for the genuine article carefully chosen for you, properly conformed then fitted to your head by someone who cares for their craft, Google Hetherington Hats. You will not be sorry, neither for the select hat nor for the select chat.