'We'll have over 400 of our hats at Aintree - they're like our kids!'

Felicity Hat Hire is a races institution in Liverpool and this year owner Deana Taylor expects to achieve a personal best – with more than 400 of their hats heading to Aintree.

Deana and her two daughters took over the shop by the Rocket in Childwall in 2021 after she’d been a customer for years.

Now the family team love watching women wearing their styles, especially the stunning showstoppers, over Grand National weekend.

“The shop is open on the Thursday and Friday and we’re always super-busy, but I do bring the iPad in to have a quick look at the TV coverage when I get chance, and I make sure I record it as well.

“That way I can look through to the hats when I get home and as the girls come on I’ll try and spot if any of the hats are ours. It’s still exciting, like seeing our kids!”

For Deana and her daughters, the run-in to Aintree is non-stop and demand is huge, so much so that they scrap their usual appointment system in the week before the event to allow for walk-ins.

“We do walk-in week every year because people are often very last minute, so we’ll get hundreds of people through the doors across the week.

“We close on Grand National day itself, then the rush starts again because we open on Sunday from 12midday to 3pm for returns. All the hats have to come back on Sunday or by 6pm Monday, otherwise it would go on and on, and we shut the shop on Tuesday and Wednesday while we get them all processed, cleaned and back on the shelves.

“By the Thursday we’re back open again, so we really have no down time at all, and as soon as we reopen we’re already booked up with weddings because we go straight from the races into wedding season.”

Felicity Hat Hire - Aintree - The Guide Liverpool — Picture – Felicity Hat Hire

This year’s Aintree Style Awards on Ladies Day has a new Best Hat category, so there are bound to be entries from Felicity’s alongside the flamboyant one-off creations by milliners.

And Deana says some absolute beauties will be on show on the course.

“We go to a trade show in Harrogate in August each year, and we always have Aintree in mind because we know we’re going to need a lot of head-turners.

“Obviously we’re picking out ones for weddings because we have a lot of those in our stock, but we do go looking for showstoppers and there’s been a lot of demand for those.

“When we’re choosing, we can be a bit more extravagant than most shops because we get so many races customers. One of our milliners who does lots of our showstoppers will often say there’s only us that’s ordered a particular style and that’s because there’s only us that’s big enough and bold enough.

“One of the styles that was snapped up first was a little pillbox with a big veil covered in polka dots. They sold out very quickly in every colour we had because polka dots are massive this year.

“We’ve also had absolutely loads of wide brims – quite a few Dior style which are very Audrey Hepburn and quite a few boaters like you’d see Kate Middleton or Melania Trump wearing.

“With colours we saw a trend for monochrome last year so this year we didn’t think it would be as popular but we’ve been asked for a lot of all-black or black and white again. We’ve actually had to do two lots of emergency orders for black hats.

“We’re also seeing customers asking for burgundy which was massive over the winter so lots of women who were organised bought their dresses then, as well as lemon, chocolate brown and suddenly everyone’s gone mad for all different shades red.”

Whatever the outfit, Deana says she always has one piece of advice for racegoers.

“If somebody’s not sure if a hat is a bit too big, I always tell them there are only two places where you can really go full-on and that’s Aintree and Ascot. And you can’t be too over the top at Aintree because there’ll always to someone with a bolder hat or a brighter outfit!”

Find out more about Felicity Hat Hire on the website HERE.