Trilbies, fedoras and even turbans have had a modern makeover, with designers such as Julien Macdonald, Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors all featuring one style or another in their spring/summer 2008 collections.

Trend-setting supermodel Kate Moss can be credited with making the trilby cool, and last season her collection for Topshop featured a black version.

This year other retailers have jumped on board the trend and have expanded the range of newly fashionable hats in a variety of colours and materials.

Accessorize is stocking a number of funky trilbies alongside their usual floppy summer beach hats, Primark has both trilbies and fedoras, and Topshop even has an unusual oversized train driver hat.

Men are well catered for too, with trilbies at French Connection and Debenhams, and bowler hats at Topman.

A spokeswoman from Welsh fashion retailer Peacocks said, “Hats used to be a staple part of every woman’s wardrobe but they declined in fashion over the years and were eventually relegated to weddings and funerals.

“In the last few years though, they have been getting more acceptable and more fashionable and this summer they’re set to burst into the mainstream.

“Our big look for spring is tribal and to complete this we have bought into many different styles of hat including oversize straw, panama styles and our biggest buy being the trilby.

“As well as hats this summer we also think that oversized headscarves in fantastic prints including ditsy florals and animals are also going to be big for spring summer.”

Style consultant Joy Watson, co-founder of Inside Out in Cardiff, confirmed that hats aren’t just for special occasions any more.

She said, “It used to be that hats were just for the beach, for old ladies or maybe for the mother of the bride, but now it’s more on an acceptable fashion item.

“Hats are useful – they keep the sun, the rain, the weather off you.

“We’re much more aware of the sun and the dangers of the sun these days, where in the past it might have just been little kids and old ladies wearing sun hats, now it’s acceptable for anyone to wear one.

“But hats are also very much a personal expression, they’re a way of making a statement about your personality. So hats can be functional and fashionable – and have gone from being acceptable to be functional to actually being fashionable to be functional.”

But before you rush out and buy yourself a new on-trend trilby or funky floppy brimmed hat – different shapes, sizes and colours will suit different people.

Abergavenny-based milliner Alison Tod, who has made hats for a number of designers at London Fashion week, said, “You should never be a fashion victim, you should buy a shape that suits your own personal style.

“Try them on and pick what suits you – they need to suit your face, frame your features and the colour is important too.

“With a hat you can wear anything with confidence, you can put anything on your head if you wear it with confidence. But generally speaking if you’ve got quite a long face, for example, you don’t want to wear something with a long crown, so you might wear a slanted crown.

“If you’ve got a chubby face you might choose something that flicks up on one side to soften the line and make everything not quite so rounded. Most of all have fun, hats are fun items.”