Chapellerie Mouret

Chapellerie Mouret has traded from 20 rue des Marchands in central Avignon since 1860, and the Mouret family has run it since 1923. The interior - Louis XVI in style, with gilded detailing and wooden shutters closed each evening with an ornate key - is listed by France's Monuments Historiques, making the shop itself as much a heritage site as a retailer. Hats are the core of the business, carrying established houses including Borsalino, Stetson, Kangol and Bailey, and the current owner has traveled to Ecuador roughly a dozen times to source Panama hats directly from the artisans who weave them, rather than through an intermediary importer. Around the hats, the shop keeps a genuinely broad accessories counter: braces, walking sticks, bow ties, driving and ceremony gloves, mittens, mantillas, balaclavas, and - the category relevant here - parasols and umbrellas, sold as part of the same formal-dress and ceremony wardrobe rather than as a specialty in their own right. The shop has drawn coverage from French outlets including TF1, Le Figaro, Telerama, Geo and Elle, and counts actors Robin Renucci and Daniel Auteuil and former prime minister Lionel Jospin among past customers. It is, first and foremost, a hatter with an unusually complete accessories range - its parasols and umbrellas are real and in stock, but secondary to the Panama hats and heritage shopfront that define the address.