MELVILLE, N.Y. - Hat head, shmat head. If there's one thing designers agree on, it's that the hat is back.

At least it will be, come fall, if the designer collections shown recently at Fashion Week are any indication. Hats floated down runways in all shapes and sizes - big, small, feathered, floppy. There were sculpted fedoras and shrunken panamas at Bill Blass, Michael Kors and G-Star Raw. At Max Azria, there were stylized caps reminiscent of railroad conductors. At Vera Wang - a sort of crushed hobo chapeau. And Badgley Mischka topped things off with hats all big brimmed, glam and - just between us - clearly swiped from Faye Dunaway's closet, circa the 1970s. (But we love those guys, so keep that under your ... um ... you know.)

"A few years back, the trend in accessories was minimalism," says Suze Yalof Schwartz, Glamour magazine's executive fashion editor at large. "Now we've got huge necklaces, big cuffs. What comes next? Hats. They're the ultimate luxury."

Although Schwartz admits she's never been a huge hat wearer - "I haven't worn a hat since 1989," she says - she found herself coveting headgear at a number of shows.

"They feel like pieces of art - you don't know whether to wear them or frame them," she says.

Granted, most women won't wear hats this daring and drama-ed up, but Schwartz thinks they'll give more toned-down versions a try.

"Men are drawn to women in hats," say Mle (no, not Emily, that's Mle) Hagen, a Manhattan milliner who designed retro stewardess-shaped hats for staffers at the W Hotel's VIP lounge backstage at the Bryant Park tents.

"If a woman reveals cleavage, of course a man's going to - there's something obvious to look at," she says. "When a woman wears a hat, there's a little more mystery - it's sexy without being obvious."

At the very least, she says, a hat gives a guy an opening line.

"It's like, `Wow, I like your hat,'" says Hagen. "It's a conversation-starter."

"You gotta have attitude, that's true," admits Jeannie Gesthalter, owner of Jeannie's Dream, an accessories boutique in Cedarhurst, N.Y. She has about 2,000 styles of handmade hats in stock, from pillboxes and rolled-edge cowboys to metallic pressed-crocodilers, weigh-nothing organza sun protectors and Philip Treacy embroidered baseball or double-buckled newsboy caps. Phew.

As for the dreaded "hat hair," Gesthalter sells a special elastic band that "can be worn in the hair, halfway up, so when you take the hat off, your hair has lift," she says.

"Some women feel like they'll stand out in a hat but, honestly, it makes anything you're wearing look new," says Gesthalter. "Whatever is on your head - feather headbands, Swarovski crystal clips, or a Philip Treacy cap - it updates the look."