hiding in the spotlight; There is no better disguise than full costume-with the perfect hat.

Byline: Joan Juliet Buck

Hats have become the anxious distant relatives of fashion, appearing at special events, endearing, reassuring, amusing sometimes, but never quite the legitimate center of attention. That might change this fall, when a preponderance of newsboy caps on the runways will fill the streets with heads covered in tweed and tartan. The newsboy cap is flat and squashy, with a brim, an item used in period films to designate underage members of the urban working class. It is the urchin version of the Renaissance Tudor cap, which was a wide beret with a round brim, made of velvet. The folds of the fabric on the crown were cinched and pulled to one side over a rich narrow band. Think of Henry VIII; the flat sack on his head was a mark of rank and power. There's something almost comic about caps; they can flop around like ice packs, they have no crown, and when thrown they whirl like Frisbees. But when a cap is made of velvet and worn with panache, it can effect a transformation. I saw it happen once. . . .

The banker had never looked so good. A red velvet cap sat at an angle on his head, banded with gold braid and stuck with a feather. A ruff of starched ivory lace circled his neck, and a discreet emerald teardrop hung from a hoop on his right ear. He wore a doublet, worked with vertical ridges of pearls, overpuffed shorts, and a codpiece. His legs, encased in white hose, ended at buckled shoes with a slight heel. He looked like the handsome and playful favorite of a king or a queen. All the lace and velvet and gold had erased from his features the wary contempt common to his profession. "Don't you dare take my picture," he barked. "I'm serious. There will be consequences."

The costume ball was held at the Hotel Lambert, given by Baron Guy de Rothschild to celebrate the marriage of his stepson, Philippe de Nicolay, to Sandrine Binet. The theme was "A Winter's Tale," a title chosen more for the words than for Shakespeare's story of jealous rage, baby banishment, death by bear, and ultimate reconciliation. It was a January wedding and a January ball, and it was five years ago, so that the costumes from the epic film La Reine Margot were still available. The fact that La Reine Margot is set at the time of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre did not deter the bride from choosing the queen's own dress, a tight affair of thick gold cloth with a huge collar. The Hotel Lambert, built in the seventeenth century by Mansart and described by Voltaire as "a palace fit for a philosopher king," made the crush of bankers, mondains, wives, beauties, and blue bloods dressed in the clothes of 1572 look absolutely at home. Musicians strummed lutes against a background of dark paneling, tortoiseshell cabinets inlaid with semiprecious stones, tapestries, and enamels. I had persuaded my date to dress as a bear, in deference to Shakespeare, but no one got it.

Everywhere you looked were ruffs and coifs, coiled braids, velvet caps, headdresses, feathered hats, and dangling pearls. Faces one knew from dutiful lunches and difficult dinners became the convincing portraits of their own ancestors, hair scraped back and hidden under what were once legible symbols of nobility and rank. The hats gave bearing to their wearers ...