I just love this ad for hats that appeared in the Evening Post in September 1940.  Isn’t the little bowler with cherries just delicious?   Sadly, C Smiths has long since closed, and though the building still stands it now holds a prosaic collection of shoe stores and pharmacies and a gym, and renovators are gleefully stripping all its Art Deco charm from the interior and replacing it with the corporate colours of whatever the latest chain store to occupy the space are.  The romance of an old department store that once sold fabulous hats is long gone.