Vivienne Westwood puts giant fish hat on the runway at Paris Fashion Week

Designer creates strange hat with sustainable twist

The fashion pack is used to unusual and nonsensical trends (remember the car mat skirt?), but the latest offering from Vivienne Westwood really takes the biscuit.

At Paris Fashion Week, the British design house debuted its spring/summer 2020 collection, designed by Westwood’s husband and design partner, Andreas Kronthaler.

Among the oversized jackets, patterned swimwear and cinched in corset gowns, was a rather unusual hat shaped like a giant fish.

The accessory was shaped like a very long unidentifiable breed of fish and covered in black sequins and gold scales. It flopped on either side of the head of one of the models with ease, its diamante eyes staring down those in the Frow.

But the strange sea creature hat had an environmentally friendly conscience.

Speaking to The Guardian, Kronthaler explained how his desire for people to buy less also inspired his intentions to make less.

The fish hat, for example, was made from scraps of sequins that were lying around the design studio.

"What I believe is that we should buy less and really love the things that we buy,” Kronthaler told the newspaper.

Other variations of avant-garde headwear featured prominently in the collection, including a towering Mad Hatter-type construction featuring multiple layers of white netting that was worn by model Bella Hadid.

Elsewhere, we saw mediaeval veils reimagined in bulbous ivory satin and black masses of netting that shrouded one model’s entire face.

(Getty Images (Getty Images)

Hadid appeared for one last time in the finale look: a frothy skirted wedding gown complete with a bulging lace umbrella that also seemed to double up as a veil.