Top that: 6 designers on the comeback of millinery

Milliner Stephen Jones throws a splendidly decadent dinner party. In the Banqueting Room at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, fictive guests including Mick Jagger, Lady Gaga, Kate Moss and the Duchess of Sussex are represented by the bespoke hats that Jones has made for them. There’s a pink Milady straw hat with a flurry of ostrich feathers, a red velvet fedora, a black gazar-brimmed hat named Trophy Wife, and Swing, modelled on a grand chandelier. The scene is set for mischief.

The room is one of a series of tableaux that Jones has conjured for an exhibition showcasing his designs in the Regency building, constructed as a seaside pleasure palace for King George IV more than 200 years ago. Its state rooms will display nearly 200 of the most extraordinary hats that have resulted from the Saint Martin’s School of Art-trained milliner’s 40-year career. “It’s the first time the Royal Pavilion has allowed an exhibition in the rooms,” explains Jones. “So it is a bit special.

His designs have long encapsulated the dizzy pleasure of hat-wearing, finding their way all over the world, from Ascot to the Melbourne Cup. “You put a hat on to have fun,” he says. “It‘s an optimistic gesture to the world, not about how you feel, but about how you look. We ‘read’ hats, and clients always say how many compliments they receive – what has the power to do that now?”

Jones is one of the most prolific designers working across the worlds of film, celebrity, performance and runway, and has been creating hats for Dior since John Galliano’s debut in 1996 (some of his pieces are currently on display at the V&A’s retrospective Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams), as well as for Matty Bovan and Marc Jacobs. He equips royalty, pop stars and racing glitterati the world over with bespoke designs that frame faces, amplify personalities and magnify a moment with surreal wit and astonishing beauty. Take a boater seen at Derby Day at Flemington last year with a crisp black and white ribbon enveloping the crown. The top popped whimsically open, as if to let in the air in a Willy Wonka moment of irreverence.

Above: Chanel ready-to-wear spring/summer 2019.

Jones’s exhibition could not be more prescient. Hats are enjoying a resurgence as a new generation of wearers take up the habit. The lexicon of styles is expansive, from Gucci’s beribboned fedoras to Marc Jacobs’s glossy black net-veiled boaters and Valentino’s voluminous straw sunhats. At Saint Laurent’s spring/summer ‘19 show, there were Swarovski crystal-studded hats topping cocktail dresses; at Prada, outsized Alice bands; and at Jacquemus, giant, slouchy straws that rippled and rolled in the breeze. Last year’s two royal weddings also brought hats well and truly into the frame – at Princess Eugenie’s wedding to Jack Brooksbank, Cara Delevingne in her Chanel top hat and her sister Poppy in Victoria Grant’s feathered pillbox were a picture. “Society is, by nature, conservative, so steps forward are small,” observes Piers Atkinson, whose hats are adored by Hollywood. “But many of the guests took a bolder approach.”

Headgear is so wildly varied, from Mary Poppins’s nifty titfers decorated with birds and feathers to Cardi B’s coolie hat that drips with beads and jewels, to Meghan Markle’s impressive armoury of fascinators and curvilinear sinamay saucers, to Prada’s neon nylon bucket hat. However, Jones believes there’s one essential element to get right. “People want simple, graceful and elegant designs,” he explains. “Christian Dior, who started out as a milliner, did not see the hat as separate – it was part and parcel of an outfit. The hat is also about telling stories, and there’s an element of playfulness, but it is now about being more ‘real’ than sensationalist.”

But how does ‘real’ translate, when, for hat-wearing novices, millinery can be so intimidating? The good news is that a little practice and play makes all the difference. As the public’s taste for hat-wearing swells, feelings of self-consciousness will diminish in equal measure.

Above: Marc Jacobs ready-to-wear spring/summer 2019.

“Treat it like shopping for a new pair of jeans or shoes,” says Nerida Winter, who has 16 years as the Australian Turf Club’s official racing milliner under her belt. “Jump in head-first; grab some options that capture your eye, try them on. If they don’t fit or suit, keep trying or seek expert advice.”

Indeed, there are often contradictory impulses at play in this overly mediated era: an internal battle between wanting to stand out and a desire for privacy. Hats, conveniently, fulfil both. “People think sometimes that people who wear hats want to show off,” adds Philip Treacy, who has been making his striking architectural and feather designs since 1990, with patrons including the late Isabella Blow, Grace Jones and Dita von Teese. “A hat is a positive symbol; the ultimate glamour accessory. It thrills observers and makes the wearer feel a million dollars.”

Modern milliners are determined to make hats easy to wear. “Small hats are sometimes easier for people to wear and understand. You can have just as much drama as a large shape by adding veils and feathers,” says Treacy, who spends hours working on the forward ‘perch’ of a hat that gives the wearer elegant angles. Adelaide milliner Sylvy Earl creates subtly elevated headbands as part of her offering, padded, cast in silk abaca and finished with a single contrasting grosgrain ribbon.

At Maison Michel, the Chanel-owned millinery atelier in Paris, which is stocked by Harrolds in Australia, creative director Priscilla Royer has been rethinking the accessory for everyday. “If a hat is too stiff, then one is scared to wear it, and they can be so cumbersome,” says Royer, who has been at the helm since 2015. “Where do you put them? They need a chair or a shelf. It becomes an object rather than a fashion accessory. I started working on a supple straw with less coating. Last year, we launched Hat on the Go, a sunhat that you can roll and pack into a suitcase.”

Above: Prada ready-to-wear spring/summer 2019.

Royer has also come up with a charming array for spring in a collection entitled Sunken Cities, inspired by the sub-aquatic world. There are straws boasting silver brims, turbans and veils in sheer, luminous textures. The star piece is a silver paillette bucket hat. “The bucket is more sophisticated than the baseball,” explains Royer, “and it has an elegance that you don’t have with a cap. It’s the new cloche – it suits so many faces.” Winter, meanwhile, is also seeing increased interest in the bucket, along with casual styles like sunhats and athleticinspired headbands for everyday, coming from all walks. “Teenagers are growing up with hats as a cool accessory. I get all sorts of requests from men, from bespoke pieces through to everyday fedoras and caps.”

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The current appetite for headwear has ushered in small, independent makers and specialists. Consider The Season by Paul Stafford, who specialises in origami paper hats that ingeniously fold into flatpacks, or local designer Lorna Murray, whose pleated, ethically made creations collapse down into a simple packable cylinder. At Matchesfashion.com, which has increased its budget dedicated to hats by 35 per cent, womenswear buying director Natalie Kingham has been working with New York-based brand House of Lafayette on a line of leopard-print turbans and scrunchies, as well as picking up Eliurpi, a Barcelona-made line of cartwheel hats by Elisabet Urpí and Nacho Umpiérrez. “You can wear them behind your neck with the ribbon tied up, fashioned after the Mediterranean style,” explains Kingham. Another independent brand making waves at the retailer is French label La Prestic Ouiston, offering twill canotiers in brilliant prints by designer Laurence Mahéo, who also works on her family’s oyster farm in Brittany.

One style can garner a cult-like following. The trio behind new label Tio y Tia created a line of felt hats, based on American south-western styles, which have been cropping up on Instagram feeds ever since. Nicole Najafi, Johanna Peet and Australian-based, British-born photographer Lucy Laucht enlisted a milliner who once made hats for Georgia O’Keefe to craft their wool creations with a single leather chin cord. The instantly recognisable hats have made themselves at home from beach to city.

Above: Valentino ready-to-wear spring/summer 2019.

Milliners will often go to extremes to further the craft. “If I had to choose just one of my creations, it would be the 17th-century galleon or Sailing Ship hat,” says Philip Treacy. “It was inspired by a chapter in Olivier Bernier’s book Pleasure and Privilege, which describes a British admiral losing a battle to the French fleet. In celebration, women in Paris wore ships in their hair to go to the opera. The piece is satin, with the sails made from paradise feathers and the rigging from the feather shafts.”

According to Jones, Galliano’s Egyptian-inspired couture collection for Dior spring/summer ’04 remains a triumph, with Erin O’Connor opening the show in a towering metallic empress headdress. For Atkinson, outer space beckoned. “There was an incredible opportunity to create the first hat to go into orbit,” he explains. “A star was planning on performing in zero gravity wearing Piers Atkinson. It was very NASA in my studio for a few days: tough but lightweight materials, shiny things, flashing lights, no bits that could fall off and clog up a circuit. Unfortunately, the Fashion in the Firmament has been postponed for now, but I haven’t given up hope,” he says with a laugh.

As hat-o-philia grows the world over, many millinery fans are making pilgrimages to the world’s renowned makers. Stewart recalls an Australian couture customer taking the bus to his London studio in Ridley Road, Hackney, wearing a giant saucer-shaped straw. “There’s always a new hat, a new challenge,” he concludes. Hats off to that.

This article originally appeared in Vogue Australia’s April 2019 issue.

Above: Gucci ready-to-wear spring/summer 2019.