Princess Eugenie of York (L) and Princess Beatrice of York arrive to attend the Royal Wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011 in London, England.Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images 
Friday was a dark day in hat history. Crimes were committed that would harrow thy soul and freeze thy young blood. I offer Exhibit 1, Princess Beatrice’s blot on millinery, and throw my client on the mercy of the court. Not myself, of course, your Honour, as I have a number of other clients who have yet to enter a plea.
Beatrice is wearing what appears to be a mushroom-coloured silk doorknocker surrounded by an octopus in strangely Fallopian death throes. It might just as easily be an ancient birth control device known as a Dutch cap — they were still making them that beige colour in the mid-1970s — or a still-rolled condom combined with a snake metaphor, stuck for reasons best known to Beatrice on the top half of her face rather than her actual head.
The designer Valentino is alleged to be the culprit. He will do. Beatrice accepts responsibility for the makeup, which occurred while chimney-cleaning, it could happen to anyone, although not usually with such symmetry. Oh, just slide the hat further down, Beatrice, and be done with it.
Her sister, Eugenie, has taken a blue shape (I use them in my shoe-tips when travelling), shoved some purple kale into it and topped it off with too many hackle feathers, plus various stripped coques and those trembly things the Queen Mother used to wear. And yes, the birds suffered.
The genius of it is that it still isn’t as bad as what Beatrice is wearing.
Sorry, your honour? Yes, the blue horizontal thing on the side does appear to be a handle.
In their defence, these helpless young women may have been guided by their mother, Sarah, Duchess of York, who — and I submit a certain notorious video to the court — was drunk, simple as that.
Beatrice was misled, as were many women in the Abbey on Friday, by a man with a history. His name is allegedly Philip Treacy, hatmaker to the aristocracy, and he has made many wealthy women look stupid over the decades, although never Princess Diana who didn’t tolerate any nonsense.
Victoria Beckham’s hat crime is similar to Beatrice’s but blacker. The hat is pierced by a shrub that, by sheer coincidence, grows in my own garden. It’s called a corkscrew hazel. Beckham snipped a few twigs, spray-painted them black and stuck them in a pillbox.
Her husband is extremely handsome, a sculpted man who earns huge sums — how much? Squillions, your honour — hitting balls with his head and kicking them, repeatedly. Seated next to this paragon and pregnant to boot, her only option was to terrify.
Jackie Kennedy wore pillboxes on the back of her head, quite successfully. I have no explanation for the rampaging forehead thrust beyond the craving for notoriety, a curse of the modern age, as P.G. Wodehouse wrote almost a century ago. They would not listen, they’re not listening still, perhaps they never will.
Sorry, an ancient lyric that still appeals.
Hat crimes are not to be taken lightly. Unlike hair crimes — which are committed upon a passive person seated in something resembling a dentist’s chair, shoulder-canopied and too polite to cry out — you cannot see a hat once it is on your head.
The damage has been done.
In contextual mitigation, Princess Anne did the usual. She plopped a mauve sidesaddle on her head and added a dollop of what appear to be purple oyster mushrooms. The curling at the edges is what happens when no one eats them and they start to dry. I’ve seen it happen, I’ve served them to people.
Add some white netting and bits of an old scarf I thought was still in my sock drawer, and you have yourself a hat! The Princess Royal doesn’t waste money. Plus the thing looks vaguely edible, and there’s a horse in a stable at Gatcombe Park who’s smiling as I write this.
The Queen’s hat is the one she always wears, it’s just yellow this time. Matches the dress, shall we move on.
Camilla is wearing the starched lining of the perfectly acceptable straw hat she bought and paid for, but 12 sizes too big and turned upside down. Actually she sat on it.
Your honour, I cannot say why women chose to be mocked by what well may be billions of television viewers. Samantha Cameron, wife of the British prime minister, did not wear a hat at all, but her husband may have snapped at her, “Calm down, dear” as he did to a female Labour MP this week in the House of Commons.
So she did. She went in alone and without a lid, to paraphrase a friend of the court, a certain Rumpole of the Bailey. “I’ll show him,” she may well have said.
Which means that there’s a value to sulking for Britain. She saved the day. May a hat never be worn again in public life.
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