Hats don’t need heads says artist Hunt Slonem

Artist Hunt Slonem believes his collection of top hats is haunted. “My caretaker has smelled cigar smoke coming from the hat closet when I’m not there,” he says. Slonem has a collection of vintage top hats that he put on display for the latest issue of Room 100, the Thompson Hotel’s in-house magazine. The collector keeps them on shelves in his Bayou Teche plantation: “I keep them out of their boxes, where I can see them, because in South Louisiana you never know what’s eating what,” he says.