THE FASHION FRAME

THE FASHION

FRAME

£4 AUTUMN 2009

editors letter

Diary 6 Hat Calendar History 8 Timeline 10 Those Crazy Victorians Fashion 12 Jones & Galliano: A Fifteen Year Collaboration 22 Bring Back Fur? 23 Weave Toshi: CA4LA 32 The 99 33 The Rise of Indian Fashion 46 In the Shadows 56 The Future of Hats 64 Bee in Your Bonnet

This is The Fashion Frame. It’s the magazine for every student who desperately wants to know more about current fashion (and doesn’t want to have to read a gazillion books to get it). Our catchphrase is, ‘everything you need to know about…’, and for this issue it’s HATS! Somewhere along the road we fell out of love with the hat, it used to be a staple of every working mans wardrobe and God forbid a lady should leave the house without her coat and something on her head. The trendsetters of the 60’s wanted to break with formality so started leaving their hats at home. But, with big names like Westwood, McQueen and Rykiel all sending their models down the runway for AW09-10 with a hat on top, it’s back and in a big way. It’s not only the designers that have made the hat resurface as a trend; new style icons are slowly creeping out of the woodwork. The likes of Lady Gaga, a woman famed for loving the OTT, has started sporting the latest in designer headgear. Check out features on the trilby and how the credit crunch affects you. Plus, see the new designers, on trend milliners and old collaborations to bring to you the most exciting things about one of this season’s hottest trends.

The Fashion Frame, here so you can delve a little deeper into the world of hats. Enjoy.

Jen Brown, Editor.

This magazine couldn’t have been done without the amazing support of my Mum - Sally, Dad - Martin and my brother - Stuart, thanks for letting me do what I wanted and believing in me and my ability. Also Charlie, for all the tea and cuddles! And my friends for keeping me going (plus the bottles of wine) Lou, Bethan, Liz, Tash, Kay, Jenny, Lin, Re, Julia and Noula. Leah and Alice, thanks for making me laugh and making this year that bit easier. Terry, Paul, Damian, Daryoush and Deborah thanks for helping me progress as a writer and supporting me throughout this course. Rob thanks for helping me create the look of this magazine, and spending your time helping me. All in all, thanks, it’s been emotional.

07841869492

contents

Trends 17 Style it Out in Tweed 18 Feathers 20 The Flat Cap: Moving Fashion Forward Features 24 The Sculpture of the Hat 34 The State of Fashion for the Younger Generation 42 The Trilby Designers 26 Profile: Rizvi Millinery 28 Babylon 36 Profile: The Student Something Completely Different 58 Aquascutum: Old is Best 59 Coco Before Chanel 60 Emma Watson Fronts the New Burberry Campaign 62 Back to the Eighties The Designer and the Hat: Top Five 38 Alexander McQueen 39 Wolfgang Joop & Vivienne Westwood 40 Sonia Rykiel & Erin Fetherston

Xoxo

Jennifer Brown

Celebrity Style 14 Agyness Deyn 15 Lady Gaga

jenbrown18@hotmail.co.uk

Hat Shops Around the World: Top Five 53 New York 54 Paris & Amsterdam 55 Melbourne & Rome

hat calendar

Hatworks: Hat Museum, Stockport – www.hatworks.org.uk Exhibition: The Fuss about Feathers - An exhibition about the popularity of feathers as a trimming in the 1800’s and 1900’s 4th July – 1st November 2009 Premiere Class: Portes de Versailles – www.premiere-classe.com Trade Show: Bringing together each seasons key accessories.

3rd – 6th September 2009 London Fashion Week: Somerset House – www.londonfashionweek. co.uk Exhibition: Ready-to-wear designers and brands.

18th – 22nd September 2009 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe: Paris – www.prixarcdetriomphe Horse Racing: Time Out Paris says, “women in wild hats get in free.”

3rd – 4th October 2009 Melbourne Cup: Melbourne – www.melbournecup.com Horse Racing: Australia’s most famous race day.

3rd November 2009 Accessories Show: New York – www.accessoriestheshow.com Exhibition: Accessory collection.

5th – 7th January 2010 Pure: London – www.purewomanswear.co.uk Trade Show: UK’s largest trade show.

14th – 16th February 2010 Dubai World Cup: Dubai – www.dubaiworldcup.com Horse Racing: One of the most famous racing events in the calendar.

Held in March Kentucky Derby: Louisville – www.kentuckyderby.com Horse Racing: Two week long racing event.

1st – 15th May 2010 Royal Ascot: Ascot – www.ascot.co.uk Horse Racing: Britain’s horse racing event of the Monarch.

15th – 19th June 2010 Graduate Fashion Week: London – www.gfw.org.uk Exhibition: Showing of the best new talent in Britain.

Usually begins 1st Sunday in June Chelsea Festival Catwalk Hat Show: London – www. chelseaartsfestival.org Exhibition: Showing of the millinery stars of the future.

Usually begins the second weekend in June Henley Regatta: Oxford – www.hrr.co.uk Boat Race: Boat Racing on the Thames.

30th June – 4th July 2010

Images 1 & 2 from HatWorks SMBC

timeline

Hats have been around forever, though there’s no evidence cave men were running around in fedoras, hey, it could have been a look.

Egyptian pharaohs wore a gold and blue headdress (high across the forehead with two long sides that went down the length of the face) to show off their status, and to this day at a coronation of a King or Queen the ceremony culminates in the crown being placed upon their head (again, it’s all about status). Over time the use of the hat has changed, from status (in Egypt), to practicality – people wearing it for work (builders, chefs and policemen), to fashion. The hat became a fashion accessory for a man in the 14th and 15th centuries making it an integral part of the male wardrobe; though women had to wait a little longer, the 18th century (though hats had been worn by both sexes prior to these dates they were a part of nobilities dress rather than a fashion accessory). Hats were still a symbol of class, with the social hierarchy in these centuries being of extreme importance, and the class system stayed of significance until the latter part of the 20th century. Hats have always been a very unisex fashion and simple styles like the Panama (a name now given to any straw hat) were extremely popular at the beginning of the 20th century, a fashion worn to this day.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing in the hatting industry, as where else would the term Mad Hatter have come from? The mid 18th century saw the introduction of mercuric nitrate to felt animal fur. As the workers inhaled the fumes it poisoned them, and as Stockport Hat Museum describes “the mercury affected the central nervous system of the sufferer causing trembling and shaking. It also led to tooth loss, tongue and throat ulcerations, irritability and violent mood swings.” Thus, thankfully they’ve stopped using it! The famous Mad Hatter from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), which sees Alice drinking tea with a crazy in a top hat, came straight out of the hat world. But what were the most popular styles of hats in the 20th century?

1900’s – Extravagance was the word of the 1900’s with hats having the most elaborate decorations possible, from feathers to whole birds being painted or dyed and worn out.

1910’s – As cars became a common mode of transport hats with veils became popular to protect the wearer’s eyes from the elements and dust from the road.

1920’s – Jiving was the dance, flapper dress the style and cloche the hat.

1930’s – Schiaparelli turned the Victorian snood into something that could be worn in the 30’s. (The snood has made a come back as AW09-10 saw big names like Fendi adopting the look.) The start of WWII in 1939 saw the beginning of a decline in hat wearing, namely it was impractical in hard times.

1940’s – With the introduction of Dior’s ‘New Look’ in 1947, women began to break away from the constraints of fashion. Headscarves became popular with the fitted Dior style jacket.

1950’s – The pillbox hat with veiling was a popular one of this decade, and as the 50’s moved over into the 60’s the trends began to change drastically.

1960’s – As teenagers wanted to rebel against their parents, hat wearing for the youth, in the most part, stopped. But the 60’s was the decade of the hippy, who adopted the Indian headband to add to their eclectic look (another type of headwear that has become popular today.)

1970’s – The 70’s was an era when it became cool to dress in a reserved way again, people were proud to be traditional. The shop Laura Ashley (which started in 1953 on a kitchen table) became extremely popular with its essence being wallpaper, clothes and furniture from the age of Victoriana. Fashion went historical and hats went all the way back to the 17th Century, the puritan (part of the dress of Amish people) became in vogue, though with less of the Little House on the Prairie clothes.

1980’s – Princess Diana, known as the people’s princess (whose meringue wedding dress was so copied), was the fashion icon of this era (and through into the 90’s). Her style was glamorous and in 1986, at the wedding of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson, she wore a polka dot dress and tricorn hat (a hat with a wide brim turned up at the front – forming three points) making it popular in this decade.

1990’s – The raving and hip-hop scene hit the world, and hats became popular again, but, it was a much more casual affair with people opting for a baseball cap. Made popular by the likes of American rapper Flava Flav who wore the cap turned to the side with an over sized clock around his neck. ‘Yeah Boy!’ Now in the noughties, though the trilby is still a popular style, hats of all shapes and sizes are becoming popular again (more and more people are choosing to put something on their head). And, as the saying goes - if you want to get ahead, get a hat!

Images 1 & 2 on temporary loan to HatWorks, SMBC 4th Jul - 1st Nov ‘09 ‘The Fuss About Feathers’

THOSE CRAZY VICTORIANS

Now, you wouldn’t think that hatting ever had anything sordid in its history. And then in walk the Victorians. BANG! You have something that would have caused PETA to have a field day; it really would have been an era of red (due to all the paint throwing). Starting in 1830 and going through until the 1900’s, the Victorian era was a time of huge decadence and extravagance, especially when it came to the fashions. They were quite frankly, obsessed with using birds for hats, and not just the feathers: the quills, wings and whole entire birds were used - they obviously didn’t like waste. They even mounted small mammals onto their hats, although this didn’t catch on as much as the birds. To create a Victoriana bird hat you first need to kill the bird, then dye or paint the bird and then mount it onto a hat base using wires and springs so it moves more realistically, and not forgetting the more endangered the better. Unless of course you stumble upon a pigeon, more lovingly known as flying rats they are not the contemporary persons favourite bird. But, to those crazy Victorians they were number one when it came to decoration, the head being the most prized part of all. But if you’re going to go the whole hog, it’s got to be a blackbird. They actually weren’t baked in pies like the popular children’s nursery rhyme would suggest, they were killed and then worn as hats. Though that somehow doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

This bizarre craze created jobs, and ostrich farming became an overnight industry, purely because of hat decoration.

In the years before the RSPCA there were no rules and regulations about endangered species and in America five million birds were killed annually to provide trimmings for the Victorians headgear.

Not something we would want in today’s society. It’s quite safe to say the Victorians were absolutely and unequivocally bonkers! For todays saner hat wearer, if you’re in a daring mood, stick a feather in your cap. You’ll be a modern day Victorian.

JONES & GALLIANO

A FIFTEEN YEAR COLLABORATION 2009 is the year that marks Stephen Jones and John Galliano’s partnership and friendship hit 15 years. But what is it about this collaboration that makes it magic?

Stephen Jones is arguably the most important figure there is when it comes to millinery. Why? Well, he’s to hats what Michael Jackson was to music, an innovator. A student of the world renowned Central Saint Martins, in 1976 he started his studies in women’s fashion but he soon realised his heart lay with another discipline, millinery. Jones left college, mesmerised by the bright lights of London and became a regular at Blitz Nightclub, creating hats for fellow revellers. He opened up his first salon in Covent Garden where he went from strength to strength, becoming the milliner we know him to be today. Recently (February ’09), the Victoria and Albert Museum brought Stephen Jones in to create an exhibition that brought together his favourite hats from around the world, whilst still telling the story of the life of a hat, from inspiration and creation to the salon and the client. Two years in the making it was one of the V&A’s most successful exhibitions, it seems as though everyone really does love a hat. This year has seen Jones collaborate with the likes of Marc Jacobs, Basso and Brooke, L’Wren Scott and Giles Deacon (to name but a few). But, it is his collaboration with designer John Galliano that shows Jones’ true greatness as a milliner. The partnership has, for fifteen years, been a force to be reckoned with.

Now, as they celebrate their years together what makes the duo so successful?

Galliano, like Jones, is a designer whose radical collections have changed and transformed fashion whilst still using fashions history. A statement personified by his 1984 graduation collection, ‘Les Incroyables’, a modern French Revolution where jackets worn inside out and upside down were seen to be breaking fashions rules. Galliano was born in Gibraltar to Spanish parents and they moved to London in the mid 60’s. Though his graduation

show shot him to stardom the road has not always been easy, losing two backers in 1990 he didn’t show again until SS92. But of course, his talent shone through becoming chief designer at Givenchy in ‘95 and Creative Director at Christian Dior in ‘96.

Jones also noticed his talent and ‘94 marked the beginning of their creative journey together.

Jones and Galliano have the power to stun and enchant audiences wherever their collaborations go, but why? Their first joint venture on Galliano’s label (in ‘94) named ‘Princess Lucretia’ showed the pair as innovators. It told the story of a girl escaping Russia to Scotland where she enjoyed taboos, like gin drinking. She eventually falls in love with the handsome Prince, thus the story goes full circle.

Galliano in this collection reinvented the bias cut dress and Jones the boater (both 30’s fashion) for the modern day woman. Jones is famed for pushing the boundaries of what quantifies a hat, shown no better than in Galliano’s AW96-97 collection named, ‘Honcho Woman’. Galliano took inspiration from American Indian women, and Jones created a spread eagle shaped hat out of lollipop sticks (unusual materials were used in all the hats like matches and plastic), it was a collection that showed how Jones was able to progress Galliano’s vision by creating hats that embodied the theme.

Galliano’s shows are as hotly anticipated for their unique take on

fashion as well as Jones’ hats, and the pair always like to break the rules. Going against every norm of fashion, Galliano’s SS06 collection named ‘Everyone is Beautiful’ saw fat people, old people, midgets, lesbians and transvestites walk down the runway, a breath of fresh air compared to the usual straight up and down models everyone was used to. The hats added to the theme, showing the decadence and opulence of the clothes, it was a real top hat and monocle affair, a day out at the races.

Today the pair are still collaborating and having fun, they have become the story tellers of the fashion world, J. K Rowling eat your heart out. It was the tale of a Russian Winter for AW0910, Galliano used steely greys for his folk dress theme with Jones creating headpieces that shimmered and sparkled under the lights, layers of coins and chiffon. It was romanticism at its best, and this is what their audiences love, they create collections that push boundaries (in their inventiveness) but are still feminine. For Jones’ Hats: An Anthology, Galliano said, “just as I wouldn’t leave the house without a hat, I couldn’t do a show without Stephen Jones. He is the frosting to any collection he touches.” The magic they create is built on mutual respect and admiration for each other. If this pair were married we’d be buying them a present made of crystal this year, so for fashions sake, let’s hope they reach their pearl.

“...I couldn’t do a show without Stephen Jones.

He is the frosting to any collection he touches.”

Agyness Deyn is a girl form Lancashire who worked in a chippy.

She loves the Queen and is an out and out patriot. She’s a close personal friend with men from London’s fashion pack, Henry Holland and Nick Grimshaw. A hairstyle has never been more copied since Rachel from Friends. And she takes her style from her Nan who dressed like her in the 40’s; she personifies the words super model. Though, she’s now, somewhat sadly, a New Yorker, she’ll always be a Brit, she even flies the Union Jack off the back of her Pashley bike (making cycling the transportation of choice).

She’s a lover of the pork pie and the trilby and breaks all the fashion rules, layering pattern upon pattern, and clashing colours, but for her it works. Everyone who wanted to attempt to get her look also bought the classic brogue. Changing her name from Laura Hollins, Agyness Deyn has become as famous a name as Twiggy. It’s a widely held belief that she’s ‘too old’ to be a model, though her success tells a different story. She’s every students dream fashion icon, she rarely wears makeup and she wears clothes off the high street (though mixing them with designer classics). In essence she’s just an ordinary Northern lass, who was discovered in a vintage clothes shop in Kentish Town and now happens to be super rich. An icon of our generation, she’s a tomboy, she’s never in heels and she’s another girl who just wants to have fun with fashion.

Holland got it right with the t-shirt ‘flick your bean for Agyness Deyn’.

She’s been the name on everyone’s lips for a while now and if she keeps her down to earth chic, it looks like we’ll all be whispering it for a while longer.

AGYNESS DEYN

Lady Gaga is one of the latest additions to this new wave of anti-pop pop music, adding to the group that includes La Roux and Florence and the Machine. She’s brought us hit songs like Just Dance and Poker Face, which are tapped from here to Timbuktu. Lady Gaga has become a woman whose style icon status completely divides opinion. Some are calling her eccentric and others don’t seem to be sucked in by her overtly interesting fashion choices, such as a dress made completely from Kermit the Frog toys for German TV. She’s definitely got guts. Aided by the fashion power house that is Nicola Formichetti, (her stylist) whose also Creative Director at Dazed and Confused, she’s made every woman who’s seen her wonder, ‘could I look that good in a lycra leotard’? She never goes casual, and she turned up to Radio One with a permanent pout painted onto her mouth and a teacup attached to her hand, completely weird but definitely wonderful. How can she not be a style icon, when for her debut at Glastonbury she had flames coming out of her boobs, taking Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour cone bra to a whole new level. She’s become a style icon because she doesn’t care what people think, and doesn’t everyone wish they could be like that?

Another man whose difference has got him a whole host of adoring fans is daring milliner Nasir Mazhar, thus when the two meet you don’t get a more talked about statement outfit. Lady Gaga turned up on the Ellen Degeneres Show in a creation that was futuristic, a solar system without the planets. The girl sure does love a hat! And headgear just seems to give her that wonderful whacky-ness. Love her or loathe her, she’s innovative when it comes to fashion, and her music isn’t bad either.

LADY GAGA

Associated with granny and geography teachers, AW09-10 saw designers bring tweed into the 21st century and there wasn’t a suede elbow patch in sight. Coats, skirts and dresses all took on tweed, smart for the nine to five look, or dressed up with heels, or even dressed down with jeans, the material works with everything.

But the material isn’t just for the aforementioned outfits. Hats and tweed have always gone hand in hand and it’s brands like Dashing Tweeds that mix the two to make them cool for the here and now.

Tweed has always had that quintessential ‘Britishness’ to it, giving city slickers a much needed taste of the country.

Tweed has a certain je ne sais quoi to it and that is certainly what German born designer Karl Lagerfeld brought to the table. A coat in steely grey with a huge lapel was one look sent down the runway, teamed with an oversized black necklace and trousers, it was simple sophistication. For the people with jobs out there this is a look that will certainly score you brownie points.

Journalist come designer Luella Bartley went for a more cutie-pie style statement, with the model carrying a white fur duffle bag with pom-poms to go with her tweed coat, a look for the younger audience to go pie eyed over.

But it’s all very well and good wearing tweed when you’re walking around town but if you want to go the whole hog you need to style it out on a Pashley bike with a flat cap. Dashing Tweeds is a tweed textile company that creates classic clothes for urban living. Set up by Guy Hill and Kirsty McDougall, the inspiration for their designs come from the colours of London. They have most recently collaborated with milliner Karen Henrikson to produce a range of flat caps that can be made to order. You choose the tweed, they make the hat. What’s great is some of their range is made for the modern day cyclist, it has threads running through them that reflect the light, so you look stylish and stay safe.

What could be better?

If you want to discover London in a unique way, then get dressed up in your tweed, cycle from pub to pub, and fraternise with other like minded individuals, its been given the long title of ‘London Fixed-Gear & Single Speed (LFGSS for short) Winter Dress Club Run’, though most just call it the Tweed Run, it was set up very recently by Lord Teddy of Holdsworth. But fear not, it isn’t just a 22.5 mile bike ride, there are stop offs for the adjudication of the best moustache and the dapper chap and elegant lady prize. And as the Lord himself says on the events page, he hates to be a bore but you have to make an effort with the outfit as they’ve made the effort to “lay on a jolly decent day.” All jokes aside all the money raised goes to charity. It’s just an eccentric day out for all tweed lovers. But you don’t need an excuse anymore to wear tweed, as it’s now uber fashionable. Brit’s, it’s time to start getting patriotic, but instead of looking like a twat flagged out in red white and blue, just pop on some tweed.

STYLE IT OUT IN TWEED

Images 1 HatWorks, SMBC STOPM: 1998.0373

Although S/S has been and gone in fashion, there is one trend that is still pushing through as important. Feathers have always been popular, a symbol of opulence and decadence, even children’s nursery rhymes join hats and feathers, all be it in the barmy Yankidoodle. What’s great about this floaty decoration is that it can be dyed to any colour and truly transform an outfit from the dull to the fantastical. It was seen everywhere at Paris, New York and London, it seemed no one wanted to miss the boat. If a trend is a colour there is only so much you can do, but with feathers every look can be completely different, creating an entirely different feel, it’s a material of huge diversity.

In Paris it was the big fashion house, Louis Vuitton that added a new dimension to feathers. The whole collection was alluring and somewhat surprisingly, edgy. There was an outfit for everyone and the theme was all about dressing up, not a tomboy in sight. Vuitton’s woman is a girly-girl who is not afraid of a bit of colour; shoes and bags grew feathers, as did short boxed shoulder dresses in yellows and bronze. Why did Vuitton go for feathers?

It made the dresses swing from side to side so the ladies can strut their stuff and add a bit of Parisian glamour to their summer wardrobes.

In London, as Giles Deacon’s models took to the stage decked out in tight fitting black and white dresses, the feathers went all Elizabethan. Why? Big white ruffled feather collars wrapped

firmly around the neck of the model, putting a creative touch on what was otherwise fairly sensible. Deacon’s collection was fashion for the more refined lady to swoon over. But he magically managed to show that feathers don’t have to be used in abundance for them to work, a simple touch here or there is really all you need.

Simple is usually a word associated with L’Wren Scott, as a designer she always somehow manages to draw that fine line between simplicity and complexity perfectly. Named Zephyr after the Greek God of Wind, the whole collection took on that of a blustery day. But Scott really did throw caution to the wind when out came her last look. Model Alexandra Tretter stormed out looking like a cross between the White Witch (from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe) and Glinda, the Good Witch (from The Wizard of Oz). In full white she cut a striking silhouette and it was feathers in a big way. White really is not a sensible colour for a floor sweeping feathered coat, but everyone wants one look that’s over the top and elaborate each season or it would just be to damn boring.

Basically the word on the street is, wearing feathers anywhere, on your head, in dresses, coming off shoes, coats, bags, jewellery, anywhere is the fashionable thing to do. Feathers are delicate, yet they can look sophisticated or edgy, moulding an outfit into something contemporary and of the moment but with hints of the past twisted up around it. Feathers are a trend that would not look out of place any season, a trend that has now become a timeless classic and is sure to appear in wardrobes for all seasons.

FEATHERS

Image HatWorks, SMBC

THE FLAT CAP: MOVING FASHION FORWARD

It’s time to say hello once again to the flat cap. It was a style first popular in the 1920’s when child film star, Jackie Coogan, adopted the hat into his look. The flat cap became all the rage again in the mid 90’s with rappers like the late Notorious B.I.G wearing them. Now though the hat has been taken out of Hip-Hop and placed firmly on the head of the modern day gentleman to make it a fashion of now. Back in the day every man in Britain would have one on at the football game, lest they should bare their balding heads to the world, now it’s rare to see any hats, unless it’s a bobble with the team’s colours. The flat cap today has big designers like Karen Henrikson and Noel Stewart designing collections each season that contain the style, bringing it up to date for 2009.

After getting his MA from the Royal College, Noel Stewart has designed for the likes of Roland Mouret, Oscar De La Renta, Diesel and Hussein Chalayan, he also makes regular appearances in Vogue. Stewart has famous friends with Stephen Jones inviting him to attend the exhibition at the V & A. He also has the claim to fame of being Jones’ assistant at Christian Dior Couture, so all in all what he makes is set to be a hot millinery trend. Which is why when the flat cap

made an appearance in his SS09 collection cleverly named Hackney, referring to the up and coming East End haunt, and in the opposing collection for the same season, named Mayfair, you know it’s time to sit up and listen. But somewhat bizarrely it isn’t Stewart who is pushing this trend forward it’s designer Henrikson.

After working with the likes of Mitzi Lorenz (a prominent milliner of the 70’s) and Fredrick Fox she was another to get her MA from the Royal College, she has also done designs for Hussein Chalayan and made appearances in Vogue. While she was at college she came up with a readyto-wear collection named Windswept that she still creates a collection for year after year. But what of the idea behind it?

“The MA collection was taking traditional utilitarian headwear like caps and head scarves and the more modern versions like hoodies and things you see everyday and turning them into couture pieces, very sculptural, mostly quite large, and amongst that I’d done the smallish flat cap shape that I wanted to make Windswept”, then it transformed into a commercial range, which is huge in Japan and she does actually see the occasional person darting around London in one. So why is this pushing the flat cap forward? Henrikson has made it into a fashion not just for men but also for women, it’s taking the popularity of unisex fashion in shops like American Apparel and Uniqlo and moving it into hats. Henrikson jokes, “it appeared by accident actually, the Windswept collection just started selling to men as well as women so I make half the samples menswear, I mean the whole collection is unisex I just make sure I have enough in the right sizes and the right colours and the right fabrics.”

So the flat cap is back and it looks like it could be here for a while; men can wear it, women can wear it, and with classy designers like Henrikson turning it into a must have fashion accessory it’s sure to move over into A/W as well. You can buy one of the designer ones from £90 to £130, not so much if you see it as an investment. But please, just remember, Samuel. L Jackson is the ONLY man alive allowed to wear a flat cap backwards, even after Snakes on a Plane, so, it’s a fashion that’s always forward!

Bring Back Fur?

For along time now fur has been off the catwalks, chiefly since production was banned in the U.K in 2003, however, leather is a staple of most peoples wardrobes: in shoes, bags and jackets, but apparently cows don’t warrant anger from the animal right activists. It’s because groups like PETA have a problem with animals being killed just for their fur. Plus, there is something more macabre about draping fur around you than trotting around in your leather heels. Beaver fur was the common (and most sought after) of all the materials used for hats in the 18th and 19th centuries, but saw a marked decline towards the late 1800’s. Today, people just don’t tend to wear hats made of fur, opting for straw with a feather, or any other trim imaginable. PETA have most recently subjected themselves to ridicule after they kicked up a huge fuss about American President Barack Obama killing a common house fly. The group stated that they think even the smallest animals should be given the benefit of the doubt, yet, as Irish newspaper Independent pointed out mosquitoes are actually the biggest killer of humans, to date. If they want to be taken seriously they need to concentrate on the bigger issues (that people care about) like fur. Fur and fashion has always been a hotly contested issue, but are the times changing?

The credit crunch has affected most people; with redundancy beginning to occur in all professions and unemployment reaching its highest since ‘95. For fashion this means designers have to be more frugal, and smaller designers have to take their bread where it’s given. A recent investigation by The Times showed that “fur companies are offering lucrative sponsorship deals and expensive trips to British designers in an attempt to break the taboo on fur.” It seems as well like it’s working. London based designer Issa, originally from Brazil, who’s dressed the likes of Madonna and Scarlett Johansson used the material for the first time this A/W. The look, carried off by model Tanya Dziahileva, wore a beautiful afghan style coat, placed over a simple black dress and set off with heels, an outfit any power dresser would be proud of, simple, elegant and chic. If it keeps her in business, and more importantly in the fickle world of fashion, it looks good, then why should anyone judge?

With fur being a ten billion pound a year industry this season the trend wasn’t defined by just one designer. Canadian born Todd Lynn, who stated on the website for London Fashion Week that his signatures were, “razor-sharp, androgynous tailoring” also adopted fur for his winter collection. The outfits, for the skinny woman in us all, really coined the phrase black is back (thankfully it’s a forgiving colour). The fur jacket worn by model Alina Ismailova, had massive shoulders teamed with long black leather gloves and fitted trousers, something any Rock and Roll girl would want to party in. He said he knew all the fur used was origin assured, meaning it’s as ethical as possible. Thus, using animal fur has moved on, it’s no longer a killing spree of protected animals where the owners of such items only feel safe wearing it at night. It’s still brave of the designers to use it though, but these days every penny counts.

Making the feel for this coming winter most definitely, one of fur.

Weave Toshi: CA4LA

Japan is known for its quirky fashion style, interesting mix of people and its obsession with cartoons and dressing up, specifically Manga.

This is why Japanese hat manufacturer, Weave Toshi, is leading the way when it comes to headwear, by producing unique but quality hats. Starting the company in Ueno (a district in Tokyo) at the end of the 80’s, they pride themselves on their staff being an eclectic mix of designers, styles and personalities. What they’re doing is different because it’s their main aim to break away from the conventions of a regular hat shop, by bringing in lots of different styles from all over the world (basically these hat shops are chic). With an ever-growing portfolio of 21 stores they hope to keep expanding to the rest of the world. They do have one store in London’s Shoreditch, giving Brits no excuse to not wear a classy hat.

Though they produce under the name Weave Toshi, Yuko (from the London store) explains, “the brand is CA4LA, (pronounced as Ka Shi La in Japanese) meaning the head”. They collaborate with international artists, designers and musicians, so the hats are a real mishmash of different talent. They also produce ranges with brands like Fred Perry and Italian hat makers Borsalino, specifically for their stores. Yuko says of the hats, “we focus on fashion and are constantly challenging convention”, they cater for the male and female market, so there really is a hat for everyone. Their customer base is actually only 20% Japanese, the rest being fashion conscious Londoners who want a hat for the everyday, most of the hats are simple but seriously stylish. Yuko says the reason they opened in London was “we thought it would be nice to expand the brand in a big city where the fashion, music and art always exist. That is London.” They now have an online shop, http://www.ca4la.com, where you can buy the hats, and they’re really reasonably priced, £40 to £100. From the original and quirky design of the hats, the Japanese influence is clear, so everyone all over the world can get a little taste of Tokyo.

For them in the future they say, “we always seek for new and original ideas so that the hats will be much more individual and of a good quality,” it’s a constant strive to have the best hats on the circuit. Pop into the shop in Shoreditch for a little piece of Japan, without the expensive flight price attached. Though in Britain they’re a relative unknown, slowly but surely they’re making a mark on the European market. So now they have their shop in London for brand Weave Toshi its next stop New York and then world domination, hopefully.

The Sculpture of the Hat There has always been a crossover from fashion into art and vice a versa, and when it comes to headwear this is perhaps the most prominent of them all because headwear really gives the designer a licence to be imaginative, there are no constraints as there are with clothes. But what would be the point of making a hat not meant for a head? Well it seems to some of London’s fresh-faced milliners, a lot of point. Designers like Nasir Mazhar and Piers Atkinson are pushing the boundaries of what constitutes as a hat. Even more established names like Philip Treacy are creating pieces that are more like sculptures than hats. If a hat finishes off an outfit and is an expression of the person wearing it; and art (especially conceptual art) makes people think as it changes the definitions of what art is by being an object or an installation. Why not combine the two? When hats meet art you get sculptural headgear (a beautiful creation that although can be worn, as a stand alone object it works well to).

And it is a trend that is selling as well as making people smile.

Mazhar who seems to be the enigma of the millinery world, is a twenty-five year old East London boy who fell in love with history and theatrics. A hairdresser by trade, but hair has limitations (and actually so did Leytonstone, which he desperately wanted to escape from), he got sponsorship from Topshop and held his first presentation in Hoxton. In an article on the designer profile pages of London Fashion Week online it says his pieces are “portable architectural interventions which strike at the chore of our embodied sense of self”, in a word, limitless. In design everything seems to have boundaries. If clothes are too ‘whacky’, the designer hasn’t spared a thought for the wearer, and are the designs art? If art is too off the wall then critics slam it for not being truly artistic.

But, for some reason, a hat that bares no resemblance to a hat is still considered to be, a hat. Mazhar’s cube headdress that he created for Gareth Pugh’s SS08 ready-to-wear collection shows perfectly the type of diverse direction hats are going in. The model looked like something out of the future, which saw Pugh touch upon a trend that has been massive this A/W. A hat is called a headpiece, and that is what Mazhar is chiefly all about creating, a piece of sculpture for a head that tells a story about the wearer. But do people really buy these hats?

According to talented Hackney based milliner Piers Atkinson (who has turned his hand to most jobs fashion related, journalism, PR, teaching and films) they really do. Though he does create hats to be worn, they are also works of art. He says, “last season I made a few showstoppers and a few wearable’s. But you wouldn’t believe what sold! The freak show ones! It made me laugh, I wonder if they’ll end up on a head or in a glass cabinet?”

Sculpture is selling, and it also helps to sell clothes. Plus, designers these days don’t just see themselves purely as designers. Atkinson certainly doesn’t, “I want to float somewhere between a milliner and an artist/ art director.” And who’s to say he won’t? His most recent collection, The Princess and the Frog, shows the idea behind the hats to be extremely well thought out, this wasn’t a collection based on a few notes. Michael Nottingham always writes an essay to accompany an Atkinson collection and as Piers himself says, it seems to add another layer, a new dimension to his work.

Nottingham describes Atkinson’s Princess as a “Barbie doll come Dorothy of Kansas and Oz, by way of Hollywood. No simple embodiment of blonde ambition, she is an unbridled, exuberant explosion of raw sexuality with many faces.” Who knew a hat meant so much. This is why Piers can create art though, there’s a huge artistic process that goes on behind each collection. They aren’t just hats, so it wouldn’t be fair to dumb down the artistry behind them.

Someone like Philip Treacy is put up there with Stephen Jones in the milliner stakes but now even this Ascot favourite has started to dabble in the more elaborate. Treacy is a man who comes from a tiny village in the West of Ireland, inspired by the weddings he saw in the church opposite his house, his hats really are a thing of beauty. Since becoming friends with the late Isabella Blow, who people often mistook for being slightly loopy for wearing creations on her head that may or may not have been defined as a hat, his career has gone from strength to strength. Most would think his hats to be beauty more than sculpture but when an actress stepped out on the red carpet in what could best be described as, an acorn underneath fluttering butterflies, Sarah Jessica Parker definitely set tongues wagging. Unfortunately it didn’t actually work on her head, because it was a sculptural piece it should have been an extension of her, yet, it just sat uncomfortably on her looking like it shouldn’t be there. Perhaps this one was a hat not for a head, certainly not that actress anyway. So whatever it’s called, sculpture, hat, art, whatever! They do seem to sell better, they may look mad but it’s a fashion for enjoyment. It makes you wonder though, how many people really do have the balls to pull it off?

RIZVI MILLINERY After winning Hat Designer of the Year ‘08-‘09 Yasmin Rizvi has become the milliner of the moment, hoping to follow in the footsteps of her previous mentor, Stephen Jones. Now, with her own business it’s time to find out, who is Yasmin Rizvi?

A woman crediting herself with a degree in international law and business, a job with the UN, studies at Central St. Martins, London College of Fashion and an MA from the Royal College of Art, Rizvi is not a woman who does things by halves. Now she has won the title of Hat Designer of the Year ‘08-‘09, she has proved she is a real force to be reckoned with. Half Pakistani, half Dutch but born in Switzerland, her influences are eclectic to say the least.

She has a modest studio at Cockpit Arts in Holborn, which she shares with three other designers, and where everything she does is created. Her work takes on two key aesthetics: simplicity and beauty, creating stunning hats and headpieces for the everyday or for a special occasion. But, how did she get into hats?

With her father being a diplomat she got a taste for travel, starting her working life in the UN, she then decided to go into fashion design. She almost didn’t turn her hand to millinery saying, “I really wanted to do fashion, that was what I thought, so I went to LCF, you could do everything in fashion and I had to narrow it down.” Moving from high tailoring into accessories (as tutors found her work to be too complex for garments), Rizvi laughs, “accessories weren’t really exciting enough for me, so, footwear and millinery were the two options, so I chose millinery as it seemed like it had the biggest range in terms of what you could do, you could use any material and all you need is your hands and your imagination.”

Millinery, for Rizvi, was the most exciting avenue for her to go down, with so many ideas, hats was the most creative. Plus, having a placement with Stephen Jones under her belt where she got to work with designers from Galliano and Dior to Comme de Garcons she really has learnt from the best. And, she didn’t even need an interview, “I remember I got the job before he actually interviewed me, and then a month later he went I never actually employ people without interviewing them,” great news for her! But, somehow working for someone else just wasn’t enough, “Stephen Jones, he is that company, you can work for him or you have to be him and there is only one him, so there’s not much room for expansion in terms of self development, so once you’ve reached a certain stage you need to either move onto a bigger company or go it alone, I think though, I was always going to go on my own.” A brave decision, yet one that has proved to be extremely sensible and successful, especially as Rizvi so aptly points out how hard it is to be a newcomer with Jones and Phillip Tracey having the monopoly on fashion houses. Now her business has been running successfully for three years (and year on year made a profit) where do her influences come from?

Admiring the likes of Viktor and Rolf, Gabrielle Channel and Hussein Chalayan her influences come from all over, “No

one can quite place where the ideas come from, I mean there is an Islamic touch, a Protestant touch, it’s just everything, it’s a complete mongrel of work.” Which she finds funny as her work has a clear signature to it. And as for the hats she creates them all herself, sourcing her own materials, especially as she uses so many. “I use loads of different materials, I really like the contrast of textures, smooth textures with rough textures, colour contrasts, the play of colour on colour, for me it’s more about the story I want to create, and I create a material that best explains that story, for a connection.” For her final MA piece she created a cloche style hat out of individual metal butterflies, it’s beautiful, be it her influences, surroundings or mind itself, nothing can take away from the fact that her use of materials send millinery in a different direction and make the world of hats move forward. The most recent collection, SS09, named Babylon has started the beginning of a whole series of collections, “I’m very much into religious design, and Babylon is the beginning of all religions to a certain extent, it was a get together of different designs creating a tower of Babylon, all blooming into something or falling apart, like Babylon tower did.” So what does the future hold in the world of Rizvi Millinery?

She already shows at London, Paris and Milan but her dream is to go to the Big Apple, “I would like to show next season in New York as well, so I’d have all the four fashion states, that would be quite nice.” It’s lucky she finds the catwalk scenario hilarious, (though preferring static exhibitions, as a self-confessed control freak, they’re much more organised). Though saying “you can’t sew anything on anymore, your hands just go numb, you’re speechless and you have to go out on a catwalk and you look like such an ass and you’re thinking, oh god, and you have interviews and you think, god I come off so bad, yeah, not doing that anymore.” With her business being a lot more established than she thought, she’s pleased with the way it’s developing. Trying to pull out of her who would be the next big thing she coyly assures me the London millinery scene is not a dying art, she did give a little away though, “I haven’t worked with him for a while, he was a former graduate from Royal College as well, Aitor Throup, he just did the England football outfit.” Throup is actually as we speak becoming the next big thing, collaborations with Stone Island and an Art Director/ Stylist for I-D his passions actually lie in drawing, so Rizvi doesn’t have anything to worry about. Thankfully, for Rizvi it isn’t all work as I leave her pondering over her girlie weekend away in Amsterdam, hoping the break does her good she’ll come back and it will be full steam ahead (as she has next seasons collection to contend with). She’s a young and talented designer who truly deserves and embodies the coveted title of hat designer of the year.

Keep an eye out for her S/S 2010 collection showing at the White Fashion Trade Show in Milan from Sunday 27th to Tuesday 29th of September this year, and you can keep up to date on what she’s doing and see all her collections at www.rizvimillinery.com.

Hat: Yasmin Rizvi, Top: Urban Outfitters

Babylon

Hat: Yasmin Rizvi, Top: H & M

Photographer: Make Up: Models: Stylist:

Agnieszka Maksimik Keiko Nakamura Zainab Balogun & Elle Bugge Jen Brown

Hat: Yasmin Rizvi, Top: H & M

Hat: Yasmin Rizvi, Top: Models Own

The 99 flake ice cream is a staple of the British summer, and they have been around for donkey’s years. Chocolaty flake, smooth vanilla ice cream and all on top of a crunchy cone. So, when Frederick’s Ice cream (a family run business for over one hundred years) decided to re-invent the classic 99 a decade ago, they didn’t really have much to do. So, what else do you do to celebrate the 10th anniversary? You get a designer to make you a huge hat taking on the shape of the summer treat, and throw in some real chocolate pockets for good measure, so the punters at Ascot were not only betting on horses but eating hats as well. ‘If that horse doesn’t win I’ll eat my hat!’ And at this Ascot you quite literally could.

But who to go for? A milliner? A prop designer? In the end they went for couture milliner Judy Bentinck, running her own business from a studio in Holborn since 2003, and training with Rose Cory, who was the Queen Mothers favourite designer, Bentinck understands good design. She began her career by training for her PGCE but she had young children and the stresses that came with parenthood meant she had to abandon that particular vocation, and she stumbled across an advert for a millinery course. With a degree in design this seemed like an interesting option, so Bentinck went for it, loving the creativity that went with hat making. Surprisingly her biggest clientele isn’t Ascot, it’s weddings, she says her clientele are (in order of the number of customers), “brides and mothers of the bride and groom and then guests, then Ascot and then there’s the other things like collecting an OBE, or lady mayors.” And where does the bespoke milliner get her kicks? “The best buzz is when they come to collect their hat, and then try it on for their final fitting and then it goes in the box and they’re ready to go and people are so excited, that’s the real buzz.” Though Bentinck is not a women led by fashion she admires the tailoring of designers like Alexander McQueen, and Pierre Poiret, who abandoned the normal structure of garments. And what’s great to hear (one for all you hat lovers out there) is Bentinck thinks there is a hat out there for everyone. Never again can you utter the words, ‘I don’t suit hats’, “when people say I don’t wear hats, hats don’t suit me, that’s a challenge, because there is a hat that will suit them, they just haven’t found it. Quite often people put hats on the back of the head, if you wear a hat in the wrong position it will look awful, so sometimes just changing the position of the hat will turn a person from going I don’t like this, to oh wow!” So basically, you just have to try lots on, till the hat fits. Judy Bentinck is a woman who makes and creates out of pure enjoyment, but how did the giant ice cream hat come about? This hat wasn’t like one of her usual requests.

She actually began creating it during an open day at her studio, where the public can come in and view designers work (hopefully purchasing things) meaning she had to hide it every time someone wanted to come in; thankfully no one asked what was hiding beneath the cover. After the PR Company approached prop makers she went to them, “look I can use the same materials that all the other hats are made from to make your 99p flake, so as soon as they saw the straw and the fabrics I was suggesting I got the job.” Slightly off the norm though for Bentinck as she’s used to dealing with brides, who go for an altogether more understated

99

the

look, not many seem to want a huge ice cream on their special day. Still, she managed to do it in three weeks after asking for six, as in her words, “they faffed and faffed and faffed about.” Now that doesn’t sound like PR! Stressful was the word of those weeks, but the coverage was amazing, not just for the ten year anniversary but for Bentinck as well. And, it was all in the name of fun. It was model Freya Berry who was given the task of ambling round Ascot in the hat, and unbelievably it suited her, having to stop to let people reach up to get their hands on some real flake. Now, if only the whole thing had been real. That would have had a lot of requests.

Thanks to IMG, international media and entertainment company, Lakmé fashion week is now in its tenth year, though it is not a show huge amounts of people have heard of. Everyone knows of the fashion capitals, New York (which IMG run), Milan, Paris, London and to a lesser extent Tokyo but now Mumbai is slowly adding itself onto that list. Indian Vogue is in its second year and is providing a bible to the fashion conscious Indian woman, showing that fashion is becoming increasingly important. Lakmé is a cosmetics company, dubbed an expert in the beauty industry, constantly coming up with new products and maintaining its name as one of the number one makeup brands in India. But who are they backing to represent them in the world of fashion?

Accessory designer Shilpa Chavan is called India’s answer to Philip Treacy, a comparison she truly deserves for creating headpieces that are sculptural yet fun. The brand Little Shilpa took centre stage for the first time at Lakmé, with her dramatic hats speaking a thousand words, as they were a comment on India’s Maharajas and Military Officers, inheritance versus power. Shilpa is a little lady who says her love of millinery comes from “Indian Gods adorning their huge crowns, giving them a surreal omnipresence, and also growing up watching Mary Poppins slides on my handheld slide viewer. My work is an obvious juxtaposition of these influences. I used to design clothes but got tired of depending on tailors, I wanted to make stuff with my hands and get personally involved in every piece.” Interning with Treacy, which she can only describe as a humbling experience, and citing the comparison with the great as an honour, she’s a girl who will never forget her roots.

Shilpa says her biggest influences are, “my friends, the films I watch and the books I read”, and is a self-confessed product of India, not afraid of colour. Using bits and bobs collected from all over she’s a hoarder, “I collect from everywhere, from antique shops to markets. I like to attach a story to my pieces, give a bit of nostalgia.” Admiring the likes of Brit label Boudicca, Shilpa says of the comparison made between East and West, “we have a whole different story, a whole different climate and a market,” though the two places do have an impact on each other as she sells her wares in London and they do extremely well. She laughs when she says all she wants for the future is “a taller little Shilpa”. Though she may not grow in size her accessory business will certainly get bigger, and she will become a success story of Indian fashion.

Many think when it comes to fashion if it’s not New York, Paris, Milan or London then it’s not important. But India’s ever foreboding presence is undeniable and it would be foolish to think they are small fry, other names like Abdul Halder are ones to watch out for, he’s a man who created an outfit for the recently departed King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Mumbai looks set to shake up the clique of fashion capitals and will soon start having household names that will be on everyone’s lips. If you think new and fresh is what fashion needs, then it’s time to start looking to India.

The Rise of Indian Fashion

The State of Fashion for the Younger Generation

With the credit crunch reaching its two-year anniversary how does it affect you? What is its affect on fashion? And what can you do to keep ahead!

The world has now officially been in a financial crisis for two years (the 9th of August 2009 marked the day). Two years ago the European Central Bank and US Federal Reserve gave £45 billion to try and help the rocky financial market. The past couple of years have marked an era where it’s harder to get a credit card (and harder to pay it off) and extending an overdraft has become nay on impossible, unemployment is also at it’s highest since Labour rebranded themselves as New Labour and were voted to power.

Everyone is saying spending has stopped, but for the student with a loan and for most, the backing of their parents, has spending really slowed down? If you fall into the under 25-age bracket then you are part of the consumer generation, where you don’t know the meaning of money and apparently think it grows on trees – surely everyone knows it comes from the magical hole in the wall! But what affect has the credit crunch had on fashion and the millinery industry, and more importantly how does this affect you?

Since the market crashed Governments across the world have had to bail out banks with billions of pounds. David Budworth for Times Online says the credit crunch is, “in simple terms, a crisis caused by banks being too nervous to lend money to us or each other. Where they will lend, they charge higher rates of interest to cover the risk. In the real world, that means more expensive mortgages, dearer credit cards and stock markets fluctuating wildly.”

The financial crisis on the surface appears to just affect those with mortgages and investments, but not so. Being a student it’s easy to forget about the banks with interest free overdrafts, and in terms of

your loans the credit crunch is a good thing, seeing monthly interest rates on it fall, so you have to pay back less. But in terms of leaving university, jobs are harder to come by, the money is less and the chances of being able to get on the property ladder without an insanely huge deposit are slim to none. However, students still want the latest clothes and want to be the ones the world is looking to in terms of youth trends, so how has the credit crunch affected fashion?

It has basically created a new buzzword within the industry, DIY. Designers like Vivienne Westwood and Junya Watanabe made up their SS09 collections of clothes that pointed towards the fact, ‘if you can’t afford these then you can do it yourself’. Westwood went for attaching scrap bits of material together with string to create an ensemble, a piece of material, a bit of a string, it’s a cape. And, attaching the same material to the LBD, well, it’s now a new LBD. Watanabe’s creations were all together more recognisable as a transformation of old into new, jeans put backwards then adding some layered material and bam! You have a new skirt. Dearly beloved Vogue, with there obvious lack of any kind of grip on the real world tried to help the fashion pack in this time of crisis by writing on their website, (under the heading Fab Frugality), “save on botox, cut a fringe” and “if all else fails, do as the late John Mortimer did and start each day with a glass of champagne.” What were we all drinking before? Bars of gold? If unlike the fabulously rich people of Vogue champagne isn’t a regular feature in your morning routine, then it looks as though the DIY route may be the one to go down. Charity shops are great for this kind of thing, buy old jeans, tops, basically anything where you like the material for cheap, and make it into a new outfit, if you’re not too

handy with a sewing machine then just cut the legs off the jeans and you have your very own pair of distressed shorts (very now).

So the clothes are sorted, but how has all this economic doom and gloom affected what we put on our heads?

On the surface it actually appears to have affected the millinery world very little, though we can DIY with clothes you just can’t with a hat, and it seems extravagant and fun head pieces are a way of accessorising and changing an outfit without actually having to buy a whole new wardrobe. Cockpit Arts in Holborn (a business where designer-makers can rent affordable studio space) released a document in August 2008 stating, “designer-makers are beating the credit crunch, with a significant increase of businesses reporting profit this year as compared to three years ago.” Two milliners from Cockpit Arts, Yasmin Rizvi and Judy Bentinck, positively affirmed this with Rizvi saying “everyone talks about this economic credit crunch but it’s been the best season for me. Bring it on. If it’s an economic crisis it has been really, really good.” Bentinck added, “I’ve had my best year so far which was a surprise in the financial climate.” But no industry is completely resistant and as a decline in couture clothing occurs, it filters down into couture millinery.

People who before would have ordered a hat for every occasion (especially weddings) are now just ordering one. As fashion moves into a feeling of nostalgia, ‘in the good old days’ everyone used to wear a hat, now is the time for bankers to get their thinking caps on, as there is only so far you can take recycling.

At the moment there are so many news reports claiming they have come up with sure-fire ways to beat the credit crunch, but there is nothing aimed at youngsters or students, for anyone under the age of 30 they are completely out of touch, they are

misrepresentative of a whole generation. The Telegraph went with, “don’t let the credit crunch cramp your lifestyle. You can still throw that dinner party, turn heads with your wardrobe and keep the heating on, we discovered,” as though The Telegraph has stumbled upon a cure that no one else could have possibly thought of. To be fair they did come up with the occasional relevant comment but most were along the lines of, “save laddered tights to wear under trousers or with boots,” what? Socks apparently rendered, useless. And, “go for a half-head of highlights. Do you really care how it looks at the back?” Clearly not realising that one, yes people care and two, a half-head means not doing the underneath, not the back! It seems as a student it would be wise to steer clear from the ‘how to crunch the crunch’ pages, unless you want a giggle.

Jokes aside the credit crunch is quite obviously not a good thing, even if it seems it doesn’t affect you, on some level, it will, if not now then in the future. But it looks as though we are slowly but surely leaving the crisis behind us. With the BBC news reporting major players in the banking world such as Hong Kong are reporting a growth of 3.3% and a rise in private consumption.

As students though, in terms of fashion try and take the positives. It’s time to start getting creative, re-use, recycle and go for the basic things on the high street. You can make a simple outfit look special by adding a hat, or a belt, or a great pair of shoes. Before it may have been out of place to go for something extravagant on your head, but go with the times and opt for something a little bit mad, it will get people talking and if nothing else put a smile on everyone’s face. And after all, isn’t laughter the best medicine?

The Student

As a student it’s easy to loose sight of what you want, as the fashion industry can be incredibly intimidating. But Alison ReesOliviere is one lady who knows what she wants and went out and got it, this is her story, so far.

‘How do I break into the industry?’ ‘Am I good enough?’

‘Will I ever make enough money?’ These are questions never far from an aspiring fashionistas lips. As a student, breaking into the fashion industry always seems like a daunting task. But moving into it after years spent as an optician, surely this is madness? One lady certainly didn’t think so. Her name, Alison Rees-Oliviere. She returned to education by taking night classes in millinery at Kensington and Chelsea College, under the watchful eye of Caroline Morris (a milliner in her own right). Here is a lady that has gone from strength to strength, and shows that there might just be hope for us all.

She arranges to meet in the upstairs of the Whole Foods Market in Kensington and opts for a glass of pink champagne. She looks elegant in a blue floral dress and is delighted to talk to me about her life and work. Alison exudes excitement when chatting about how she got into millinery, “I had an amazing friend who is a burlesque dancer, she was learning, so I went to her very first performance. I was really quite astounded cause I was expecting it to be sleazy, it was at the back of a working men’s club, I walked in expecting to see lots of men in rain coats. I was thinking I was going to have to drag her off the stage and run with her after the performance, but it was very interesting, as 80% of the audience were female. And they all were wearing these amazing hats and fascinators and it was so glamorous. They were there to support the new act and their friends, it was just a really wonderful thing to do.” Thank goodness she didn’t dart for the nearest exit when she first set eyes on the location, as this was where her initial millinery aspirations first sparked. Alison and her friend were both short of a few quid, so she decided to make hats to go with the burlesque

outfits, teaching herself by just getting stuck into it. Then, a few of them ended up being worn on The Sex Education Show, after just three months of hat making, “I decided I’ll give it a go and see what I can do,” and as it turns out, she can do rather a lot.

The competitions she’s won, deals she’s made (with shops), and the hats that have been chosen really makes for an impressive list. Alison is clearly, and rightly so, chuffed. To try and raise her profile in the Kensington community (that she describes as “quite village-ee”), she is starting to get hats from the local charity shop and will turn them into a more saleable, extravagant piece, so the shop can make more profit. “To start with I’m experimenting on one piece where I’m getting together all my ideas, it’s sort of a very traditional ladies pink hat which I’m going to turn into something weird and wonderful,” (and she takes nothing for herself, it’s 100% for charity). Kensington and Chelsea College have an understanding with Fenwicks, that they come in and look at collections and if they like any of the pieces, they display and sell them. So, after submitting a collection that was based around four popular cocktails, the Bloody Mary, Strawberry Daiquiri, Blue Lagoon and Black Russian, the department store selected one. It was the popular Sunday morning drink (and supposed hang over cure), the Bloody Mary, it’s in there on a sale or return basis, if it doesn’t sell she’ll get it back and if it does she’ll make some money. But the glory doesn’t stop there.

Since Stephen Jones’ exhibition at the V&A, it has become a place renowned for its hat collections; though it’s not just old talent they like to celebrate it’s new as well. To find talent of the future, they ran a competition where students had to produce a piece that was inspired by the V&A. Alison started it late as she’d been off on holiday and decided to take a peek at the Magnificence of the Tsars exhibition. It was an exhibit showing many of the Russian Tsars clothes and the dress of the entourage that went with them. Alison jokes, “I had so many ideas of what I wanted to do and then I just kind of had a mad, [she pauses for thought], oh why don’t I incorporate all the ideas I had somehow into one. So I decided to do a tiered Russian doll effect, but with a hat, so I ended up having three hats you can wear all together or separately. So although it’s more an art piece than I suppose one you can properly wear, I’m really pleased with how it came out.”

And so she should be. She now has her Russian Doll Hat on display in the museum, and she was up against fierce competition (jewellery makers, milliners and designers all entered).

Sadly though this talented milliner is jetting off down under, all in the name of love. “I have a fantastic boyfriend, unfortunately he’s a million miles away, I met him in the UK and he got a fantastic job offer back in Sydney so it’s been a long distance relationship for about eighteen months.” But not one to take a break and enjoy the sights of Sydney, she’s hitting full time education and she already has a shop in Melbourne wanting to sell her pieces.

All this humble lady asks of the future is “getting realistic prices [for her hats] for the time it takes me,” and you get the feeling this is an attainable dream. She’s honest. She’s talented, and she’s most definitely someone to watch for the future. By day an optician, by night a milliner, perhaps all you do need is hard work and determination to succeed? Though, I suppose, a love life in Sydney probably helps.

The Designer and the Hat: Top Five McQueen and Treacy Alexander McQueen every year provokes some form of reaction to his designs. By the squeals of delight from his younger audience, they love that he’s not afraid to create clothes with a difference (the difference being he’s not afraid to shock). At the beginning of a designers career being outrageous is the norm, the shocking thing about McQueen is he’s still shocking now, grabbing the attention of milliner Philip Treacy. The pair first collaborated in ‘99 on McQueen’s couture collection for Givenchy, where he was placed as chief designer but artistic differences led him to leave and thus sold 51% of his label to the Gucci Group. The pair also shared a famous friend, the late Isabella Blow, who bought McQueen’s entire MA show. McQueen is the wild boy of fashion, nicknamed ‘L’enfant terrible’ where as Treacy is all together more reserved. In their most recent joint venture on McQueen’s AW09-10 collection, Treacy’s hats matched McQueen’s clothes, showing opposites do attract.

The pair decided it was umbrella hats that would be the next big trend. Umbrellas are pretty much a staple for everyone, especially when living with ‘the great British weather’. It is a nightmare though when you have to hold the umbrella whilst juggling a million and one other things. Enter McQueen and Treacy; they have come up with a solution to a problem that perhaps wasn’t there in the first place, by creating the designer umbrella hat. The most wearable was patterned in the collections houndstooth, it was an in veritable battenberg cake of colours. McQueen was not the first to use this though, as it is a popular headwear of the old ladies of Asia whom use them to keep the sun out. Others included a huge black umbrella shadowing the model below, and two small black umbrellas worn facing each other (one was upside down). The umbrella hat done by anyone else would be, quite frankly, a joke.

Yet, done by milliner Treacy (under the watchful eye of McQueen), it somehow looks bang-on. Come the next pour down the streets will be lined with hands that are free to do whatever they desire.

Joop and the Bubble

Westwood and Prudence

Woolfgang Joop is the creative mind behind label Wunderkind.

Starting under this label in 2004 (after selling 95% of his previous label, Joop, in 1998 and the rest in 2001 for millions) with a show in New York and now showing in Paris, the label tries to embody what women want - refinement and elegance. Joop is a man whose tailoring is perfect (though there are often viewers who are less than enamoured with his catwalk shows), and he also designs his own hats. His AW09-10 collection came under criticism from the likes of Nicole Phelps for Style.com who said, “the results are a strong argument that art is often better left on walls,” after the designs were inspired by a Russian movement named, Suprematism. The movement, started in 1913 by artist Kazimir Malevich, was all about exploring geometric shapes, specifically the square and circle, which Joop tried to explore in his clothing and hats. Though the clothes themselves may not have hit the mark, his hats provided a wearable alternative to the beanie for winter.

Taking his inspiration from the bubble beret, a style popular in the 1960’s as it fitted over the big beehive hairstyles popular in this era, the bronze hats were tilted to one side worn with grey peak shouldered coats, with chess board like panels in the sides and matching tights. The bouffant hat is one that is practical, though as it states in his biography, his vision is to create a wardrobe that a contemporary and independent woman would want, this hat certainly doesn’t fulfil this quota. That aside for a comfy winter hat to cover up a bad hair day you don’t get a more perfect style. He also had top hats in the collection, which provided an edgy goth-esque look that wouldn’t look out of place at a Marylin Manson concert. Why did Joop make the top five? Though he himself was aiming for a different look, sophistication, the hats are actually a fun yet functional addition to any winter wardrobe, and happen to look good with most outfits. If for you the clothes don’t quite meet the grade, the bubble berets are undeniably a lesson in first class style.

After opening up a shop called ‘Let It Rock’ in the Kings Road in 1970 with her partner, Malcolm McLaren (former manager of the Sex Pistols), the flame-haired eccentric of fashion, Vivienne Westwood, has been pushing boundaries ever since. The shop, which changed its name several times over the years, went through Rock and Roll, black urban culture and with the introduction of the Sex Pistols in 1976, punk. Since this date Westwood has become the Queen of punk and this style is a heavy influence on all her collections. She first showed in London but moved to show in Paris in 1981 and was the first British women to do so since Mary Quant (the women who brought us the mini-skirt). Showing under four labels, Gold Label, Red Label, Man and Anglomania she is the best known female designer of our time.

Westwood though is a designer not a milliner, and since 1991 she has been collaborating with Prudence Millinery to get the hats for each collection. Prudence studied in New York and after graduating moved to London in 1986 to try and further her career, now with a portfolio that boasts designers like Yves San Laurent, Lacoste, Gucci, Julian Macdonald and Charles Anastase as well as Westwood, she is the milliner of choice. Each hat she creates is a bespoke piece, individually hand made.

For Westwood’s AW09-10 Gold Label collection, named ‘+5˚’ (the amount the worlds temperature is set to rise), she chose to create hats that can be described as nothing else if not inspired by the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. The whole collection was a throwback to the 80’s due to its patterned blazers and combat trousers. The hat though was a blue and pink pastel cone of delight.

A slouchy hat, which could be forgiven for being mistaken for a hood, the perfect girlie accessory (but for girls that want to add a bit of laid-back charm to their outfit.) A Westwood show would not be complete without a touch of the unusual, and she sent her most recent muse Pamela Anderson down the runway with her hands tied behind her back. With Pam as her muse and Prudence as her milliner, the collections will always perfectly represent the words weird and wonderful.

Fetherston and Bernstock-Speirs Rykiel and the Beret Sonia Rykiel is a woman whose signature red hair is as recognisable as the clothes she creates. Setting up shop in 1968, last year saw her celebrate 40 years of the house of Rykiel.

Her importance was recently shown at a retrospective of her work in Paris. Where 30 couturiers showed their admiration by designing a piece (as the exhibition described) “a la Sonia”, each one representing Rykiel herself or the woman she designs for.

Roberto Cavalli went for layers and stripes whilst Jean-Charles de Castelbajac went for a touch of the humorous, designing a black bandeau dress with Sonia’s face on, framed by bright red hair. In France she is as popular as Chanel or Dior and now British Vogue have begun putting adverts for her within their pages, she’s become a household name in Britain to. She’s famous for her knitted wool, striped jumpers and as her biography states, “she invented inside out stitching”, a pioneer of our time. As well as designing clothes she designs her own hats as well, making Rykiel a woman with a difference.

For her AW09-10 collection she designed cheeky berets that sat jauntily on the heads of the models who sauntered in chatting to the crowd as though it was a meet and greet rather than a fashion show (much like all of Rykiel’s shows where she puts on a performance, putting a stop to the thought that models can’t act).

Slinky velvet trousers and matching jackets all in black, underneath a sparkling black beret. Worn as a hair accessory, this hat will make any outfit because it’s French, it’s sexy, it’s chic and it undoubtedly shouldn’t just be left to the winter uniforms of schoolgirls. Glittering away like diamonds (both the models and clothes), this was a rich collection by any standards. And, after all, what French collection wouldn’t be complete without a beret? Rykiel is unquestionably a woman with the Midas touch.

Erin Fetherston is fairly new to the world of fashion, showing her debut collection just four years ago she’s a designer for the girls out there who want pretty which is why she’s important, she’s making clothes that please. Taught in America she left for France with a love of design, now with celebrity clients like Kirsten Dunst and Anne Hataway and flitting between Paris and New York her dream of becoming a designer has most certainly come true. Her signatures are floaty dresses and full on girl, if her clothes were a colour they would be pink, bubblegum pink.

For her hats she collaborates with Bernstock-Speirs, a label established in 1982. The brand is made up of two Brit designers who state on their website they are “inspired by the underground club and music scene” their main focus though is “detail and quality.”

This is why when they created sequinned hats for Fetherston’s AW07-08 collection people went mad, and this was the first time Fetherston was noticed for the hats in her collections as well as the clothes. Whimsical, fairy tale and magical are all words associated with a Fetherston collection and she didn’t disappoint this A/W. The models took on the form of a wind-up-doll dressed to the nines in luxury; sumptuous, silky reds; structured blacks (vertical lines were used a lot); skyscraper heels and Peter Pan collars. And what adorned their heads? A copotain, Bernstock-Speirs and Fetherston obviously delved into the history books for this one, as it was a style popular from 1560 to the early 1600’s. Not satisfied with just popping this tall hat onto the heads of the models though, they added a huge bow to match the theme that ran through the rest of the collection. It may not be a hat for the everyday, but it is a style statement, why? The hat is big and red, you don’t get more ‘notice me’ than that. You’d have to have a touch of the Anna Piaggi (Italian journalist and muse of Stephen Jones) about you though to pull this one off, but maybe it’s time to be daring and try something different and take on the form of a true Fetherston girl, someone whose girly but bold and brave with it.

trilby “It’s a classic hat.”

The trilby as a name is 115 years old but where did it come from?

With so many hats to choose from to adorn our heads, what is it about the trilby that makes it the hat of choice (as it isn’t just a celebrity phenomenon)? A feature about the trilby hat: the groups that defined it, the celebrities that wear it and the designers that make it.

There have been so many styles of hats over the centuries that it’s surprising a style that became popular in the late 1890’s is still here today. But what is a trilby? According to the Fairchild Dictionary of Fashion it’s a “man’s soft felt hat with a supple brim.”

Yet with style icons like supermodel Kate Moss and Actress Sienna Miller wearing it about town it’s now one of the most universally worn by women (as well as men). And has been seen on many of the catwalks this S/S. Wunderkind and Marc by Marc Jacobs, are both fashion designers that have the power to set trends. SS09 saw Wunderkind choose a matching theme for the trilby where the fabric of the hat matched the fabric of the dress, with his signature simplistic patterns being shown time and time again. For Wunderkind’s collection the trilby added that extra edge (along with the knee high socks and cropped jackets). Marc Jacob’s SS09 collection popularised the straw boater and his Marc by Marc Jacobs collection brought the trilby to male heads, bringing the hat back to its routes, why? It was a casual affair; the reason men adopted the trilby in the past.

Blazers, shirts and trousers all crumpled up, a real straight out of the luggage look. Designers are where fashion begins; they set the colours, the materials and the silhouettes and now they’ve chosen

the trilby. But, what started this fashion craze? It was simply, a book.

George Du Maurier was first and foremost an illustrator, spending his adult life working for a magazine called Punch. His family history was complex; a French Grandfather, half French father and English Mother, brought up in Brussels and Paris, the family finally moved to London for Maurier’s education. In London he found his calling, art, and thus went to Paris to study. Living by the phrase La Vie Bohéme (meaning bohemian life) in Paris, this is where Maurier got his inspiration for the book, Trilby. Maurier though was not to write the book till the latter part of his life, it was published in 1894, and was an overnight success, selling 300,000 copies by the end of the first year. The simple story touched the hearts of those in England and America; Trilby the young artist’s model is mesmerised by the evil Svengali, with whom she becomes a famous singer. When Svengali eventually dies the spell is lifted, though it is too late and Trilby dies also, and then follows the death of her ex-fiancée Little Billiee. This heroine wore a soft felt hat, and it is here that the trilby got its name.

People loved the world of Paris Maurier described, where famous artists like Toulouse Lautrec and Van Gogh fell under the spell of bohemia. This book shows the power of words, that a hat can be named after a character so dearly loved. And so the trilby was born. Between this date and the 1960’s the trilby was worn mainly by men for a casual look (before the flat cap took over) but was soon adopted by youth culture.

Throughout the 20th century various groups adopted the trilby to form part of their ‘look’. The Mods in the 60’s were as much defined by the way they dressed as The Who and speed: turned

street style Louise Norman: 22 Student: BA Fashion Photography.

Trilby: Urban Outfitters.

I Love the Trilby Because: It adds to the outfit, making it quirky.

Wearing: Topshop skirt & t-shirt, charity shop belt.

Style Icon: Agyness Deyn

up jeans, Fred Perry polo tops and often a trilby formed their look.

But a group that really embodied the trilby, was a movement in the 70’s known as two tone, a genre of music that people listened to that was a mix of reggae and pop. They followed bands like Madness, whose lead singer Suggs is famed for wearing a trilby.

The 70’s also saw the release of two of the Godfather films, and with the release of Goodfellas in the 90’s (and the third Godfather) the trilby’s popularity surged again as people tried for the gangster look. In the noughties though, with celebrity being so important, A-Listers that adopted the hat have made it a trend once again.

2003 saw the trilby go through a Dior Homme inspired menswear moment, as Pete Doherty became the face of a style known as heroin chic. After achieving fame with band The Libertines and releasing a hit album Up The Bracket he became renowned for his drug use as much as anything else. A trilby permanently stuck to his head, and a needle surgically attached to his arm; his popularity for being a screw-up instead of a musician was such that anyone in a trilby and skinny black tie was accused of trying to be him. His exgirlfriend Kate Moss is another to show the huge impact a celebrity can have on style, another famous trilby wearer, her name sells clothes. Companies like ASOS sell the hat with phrases like, “in the style of Kate Moss”. Anyone interested in fashion would like to think they weren’t influenced by the media or celebrity, but secretly we all our in some way or another (even if you don’t like to admit it). It would be shallow to think though that a hat is simply worn because of association. It’s as popular today as it was 100 years ago, as 26 year old student, Sarah Watson says, “I love the trilby as it never really goes out of fashion.” But if you can’t afford the designer hat, where can you get one?

It’s the student’s answer to affordable fashion and the high street store that bags some of the best designers (Christopher Kane and Emma Cook), Topshop is the closet thing to designers the High Street has. They support budding British designers with their New Generation Scheme, and show Topshop Unique at London fashion

week, Kate Moss also has an on going collection with the store (seeing as she’s chummy with the boss it was kind of inevitable).

The huge store in Oxford Street is still the biggest store in the world (90,000 square feet) and a place where time just seems to disappear. So, it’s the obvious place to start when on the hunt for a trilby and starting at around £18 they’re not expensive by any stretch of the imagination. Another High Street place great for a trilby is Accessorize, and they have a whole assortment, for summer or winter, £24 for a feather trim contrast check trilby that would look great teamed with some tweed. For a more vintage look go to the charity shops, Oxfam.com has a tweed Aquascutum trilby for just £9.99, on trend, vintage and designer, for someone who wants to look good with not much money it’s perfect. It’s all very well and good spouting about how amazing the trilby is for said reasons, but what do you really think?

Students in London (collared outside Topshop) give their opinion on why the trilby is so popular. 21-year-old Kate Pritchard says, “I love the versatility of the trilby and the fact it never goes out of fashion. It’s definitely a classic item”. 24-year-old design student Nick Harrington goes with, “it’s a classic hat, I’m always in mine, it just improves any outfit.” Not everyone likes it though, but there are still positives, 24-year-old Chloe Marshall says, “I’m not a big fan of the trilby but I like that old shapes come around and are adapted to modern fashions.” And, 23-year-old Natasha Pratt says, “personally I don’t like the trilby but I think it’s popular because it looks quirky and makes people stand out.”

Whatever our thoughts on the trilby it is undeniably a timeless classic. The trilby is as popular today as it was 115 years ago. Whether it’s designer, high street or vintage there is one out there for everyone. From it’s beginnings on the head of a beautiful model, to its adoption by the Mods to Kate Moss making it hers the world has always been adapting and changing the trilby to suit individual needs. With such a long history the trilby is one hat that will always be remembered.

Bethan Jackson: 24 Student: BA Fashion Design.

Trilby: Primark.

I Love the Trilby Because: It covers a bad hair day and still looks good.

Wearing: Topshop tank top, Diesel jeans.

Style Icon: Sienna Miller.

Liz Bartlett: 22 Student: PHD Astro-Physics.

Trilby: Oasis.

I Love the Trilby Because: Even though they’re really popular you don’t see everyone wearing them so it’s still an individual style statement.

Wearing: H&M shorts, Hollister camisole, Topshop cardigan, River Island belt & boots.

Style Icon: Lindsay Lohan – without the drugs and car crash lifestyle.

Hat: Vintage Dress: Tsaritsar

in the shadows

Hat: Vintage, Dress: Stylist’s Own, Belt: Stylist’s Own, Tights: Topshop, Shoes: Models Own

Hat: Yasmin Rizvi, Top: Customised

Hat: Dragana Perisic, Dress: Dragana Perisic, Tights: Topshop

Hat: Alison Rees-Oliviere, Dress: Vintage

Photographer: Make Up: Models: Stylist:

Agnieszka Maksimik Keiko Nakamura Zainab Balogun & Elle Bugge Jen Brown

New York: JJ Hat Center

top 5 shops

Hats have a rich history, and this cannot be revealed better than by long standing hat shop, JJ Hat Center in New York. They are officially New York’s oldest hat shop; they state, “established in 1911, we bring you the finest hats and caps coupled with excellent service and a staff consisting of the most knowledgeable hat people in the industry.” The shop now situated on Manhattans’ fifth avenue has pride of place, kitting out New York’s hat lovers, gentry and the odd tourist alike, with an array of hats; they stock all styles, berets, trilbies, pork pies and the classic fedora. Featuring in New York’s Time Out magazine shopping section in March, which described how the shop had changed owners many times over the years and recently had a change of location, saying of the shop, “the new space has an opulent, old-timey flair with it’s rather large wood-and-tile interior kitted out with a faux fireplace surrounded by teal leather armchairs, chandeliers dangling from high ceilings and, of course, row upon row of colored hats.”

Prices range from $30 (for an authentic Greek fiddler) to $1200 (for a Montecristi Optimo) but most peak around the $200 mark (about £120), these hats are an investment. If you’re not interested in purchasing a hat, the interior alone is worth a peek; even it is just to pretend you’re part of the elite upper-class for a few moments. www.jjhatcenter.com 310 Fifth Avenue, 32nd Street, New York

Amsterdam: De Hoed van Tijn Set in a side street off the Dam square in Amsterdam, De Hoed van Tijn is the Aladdin’s cave of hat shops. The shop is owned by Kees and Henk Barras, and the pair have owned it for the past 13 years. In a recent article by The Hat Magazine it says about the shop, “hats had been on the premises for 27 years, originally as a secondhand ‘vintage’ shop,” the duo then decided to buy it, seeing its potential as a hat shop, selling hats for everyone. They stock men’s, women’s, and bridal hats some of which they make and design themselves. It’s what you would expect of an old fashioned hat shop, rows upon rows of caps that you’ll have to rummage through to find the right one. The duo still have a huge passion for the industry and shop, as Kees also said to The Hat Magazine, “we love working with hats and even after all these years enjoy it enormously, every day!”

The shop is so vast in their collections, you would be hard pushed to find a hat that didn’t fit. This shop is one for the vintage lovers. www.dehoedvantijn.nl Nieuwe Hoogstraat 15, Amsterdam

Paris: Marie Mercié Marie Mercié started life as a journalist but this just didn’t satisfy her want for creativity, it states on her website, “she started making hats on a whim and opened her first shop in Paris in 1987.” Since then she has been creating bespoke hats from her workshop in Paris that range from the everyday wear to the out right extravagant, (for her more flamboyant customers); leopard print funnel hats, to black top hats, to hats made completely from straw, the shops have something for everyone. Since her shop in Paris she has been adding to her portfolio ever since, and 12 years ago she opened up shop in London’s Knightsbridge. With celebrity clients like Milla Jovovich and Kirsten Scott Thomas on her books she’s moving millinery forward, by getting people to experiment with hats. The shop is a place where you can try on all the hats and have a couple of hours of fun, finding the most outlandish one for you.

She ships to Japan, the USA and the Caribbean and prices start at around £120. A shop to find that quirky added extra. www.mariemercie.com 23, rue Saint Sulpice, Paris 8, Knightsbridge Green, London

Melbourne: Louise Macdonald

Rome: Borsalino

Louise Macdonald produces fashion ranges for the spring, and bespoke one off pieces for wedding clients from her studio in Melbourne. She started in millinery in 1990 and since then her career has gone from strength to strength, culminating in her setting up her own shop in 1995. She’s a favourite in Dubai, working there in the lead up to the Dubai Cup, her hats are perfect for a day out at the races. She also has the claim to fame of working with designer Hugo Boss, exhibiting at Melbourne’s Spring Fashion Week for a women’s wear line, on top of all this, she teaches, sharing her expertise with young rising stars of the millinery world. Her creations have also been seen on screen, designing the wedding hat for Elizabeth Bennet in her marriage to Mr.Darcy in the 1995 BBC drama, Pride and Prejudice. In an interview with Melbourne Fashion Week, Louise described her creations as, “elegant and quirky that relate well to the head.” Her pieces take classic shapes like the trilby and transform them into a hat for a special occasion; all her hats have a specific theme, such as the Cha Cha that elegantly portrays a crumpled up piece of sheet music.

The prices relate well to the wallet, a price to suit everyone, ranging from $195 to $640 for her spring ‘09 collection (about £100 to £320). She cannot only be found in her studio but also in select shops throughout Australia.

This hat shop goes under a company name that has been around for 152 years. It began when Alessandro Giuseppe Borsalino started the company (after studying millinery in France) with his brother Lazzaro, they are now one of the biggest producers of felt hats in the world. The company has even had two films made about it, the first Borsalino in 1970 and the sequel in 1973 Borsalino & co. the films brought about the revival of the company. Unfortunately now it is no longer owned by a member of the Borsalino family as the company says on their website, “on 20th December 1979 Teresio Usuelli, last heir of the Borsalino family, left the company, leaving his role of president to Vittorio Vaccavino.” Since then the shop has now reached an annual production of 250,000 hats made in felt, fabric and straw. The hats produced come in all the styles you could think of, but mainly it’s traditional fedoras with a contemporary twist.

With shops in France and Shanghai and its company also expanding to Japan and America, their popularity is worldwide.

A shop in the heart of Italy, Rome, its hats are full of history and tradition. (Just remember the designer price tags).

www.louisemacdonald.com Room 3, 8th Floor, 37 Swanston Street, Melbourne

www.borsalino.com Via di Campo Marzio 72A, Rome

The Future of Hats Resort is a name given to a pre-spring collection released by certain designers, to show what is to come from them in the future. These collections also become a good indicator of trends and styles that will be in S/S wardrobes (it’s also a way of keeping customers interest, showing them a little of what is to come). Though most use Resort to predict clothing trends, it’s also a way of spotting the future styles of hats.

S/S is going to be kind to the wallets as the winter trend of headscarves and berets will be carried over into spring. The collections were a muted affair as all the designers showed colour palettes of creams, blacks and greys, with the odd one veering off the beaten track and going for colour (Alexander McQueen and Diane von Furstenberg). Chado Ralph Rucci took influences from the orient and added a bit of colour with chiffon pink and yellow dresses and was the first to use the black headscarf. Thankfully it wasn’t all calming colours as Diane von Frustenberg was inspired

by Africa with bright prints; she chose the headscarf again with a huge bow adding an extravagance to the outfits. Michael Kors went for simplicity and again the black headscarf was featured on the heads. The edgiest use of the headscarf was at Rag and Bone where the clothes were layered with biker jackets, creating a real Rock and Roll vibe. Rykiel went for the classic sun hat; so now is time to reuse what you’ve already got. What does all this mean for the future? Go Parisian in a beret, or for a headscarf – brilliant for sorting out that summer sun hair. Though the Resort collections went for muted colours; reds, greens and blues would be the colours to go for if you’re feeling a bit more adventurous than the standard black. So if you want to get ahead in terms of hats, get a headscarf, looks like it’s time to start practicing knots.

AQUASCUTUM OLD IS BEST With their first factory opening in 1909, one hundred years ago, Aquascutum is a brand with a long heritage. They are one of the few luxury brands to still produce the majority of their clothes in England. With Michael Herz sitting at the head of Women’s wear, he has kept the brand a fashion sign of all that it means to be British. Aquascutum says of their trench coats, “each trench coat passes through 70 pairs of human hands during production. It takes over 6 hours to make each trench coat.” Showing the huge dedication and care that is put into every single piece of clothing.

Which is nice to know when so many clothes these days seem to be in and out in the blink of an eye. Shoddy craftsmanship is not something associated with this long established label.

As a brand, every season they always layer trend upon trend and their most recent collection was no different. Tweeds, head scarves, knits, layers, peak shoulders and red and black together, you name it they had it. They also had super models in abundance, with the fresh faces of Jourdan Dunn and Daisy Lowe joining household names like Stella Tennant, who opened the show, and Alek Wek who was to close, they also threw Yasmin Le Bon into the mix, just in case there weren’t enough iconic beauties. Naming one of the inspirations to be nostalgia, this is something the brand knows how to do, and they do it well. They brought back previous classic Aquascutum shapes, but tweaking a silhouette here and a fabric there. Most of the models wore leather gloves with wide cuffs (slipping in another trend, leather), showing Herz to keep protection from the elements in mind when designing the female winter wardrobe. Elegant and safe, but with pretty floral prints reminding us that spring is hopefully just around the corner. The designs are a joy to wear as well, who wants to stick to all black in the winter? It was this A/W specifically that showed the brand could be full of trends yet still keep unity, it could use models of the past and present without showing off, and thus they created a show that kept to their British roots with the use of tweed. For Herz and Aquascutum it’s clearly a case of older and wiser. With more and more new designers finding it increasingly hard to break into the industry putting them up against the likes of Aquascutum will mean these unknowns will have trouble getting their voices heard. They should take a leaf out of the book of Aquascutum, it doesn’t always have to be shocking to gain fans, sometimes the old ways are the best ways.

Coco before Chanel Coco Before Chanel, which sees Audrey Tautou take on the lead role, tracks the life of the famous French designer Coco Chanel.

It starts with her childhood days at an orphanage, moving on to her fledgling career as a singer, not forgetting her scandalous love affairs, and it ends on the cusp of her success, leaving it open for a sequel about her actual life as a designer. The film has been highly anticipated, but who was Coco Chanel and why is she so adored today?

Born in 1883, the tragic death of her mother saw her childhood years spent in an orphanage, where she was brought up by nuns who taught her how to sew - a useful skill as it turned out. She had a somewhat fleeting career as a singer where she adopted the name Coco. She moved from one wealthy man to another, each one helping her career to take a step further. Though she has become a fashion hero in the eyes of so many, our readers might like to know she actually spent her younger years as a milliner, opening up stores in the early 1900’s in Paris, Deauville and Biarritz.

But hats just weren’t enough. She opened her couture house in 1920 in Paris, at the address it still stands today: Rue Cambon. She’s a lady who brought women the little black dress, trousers and the suit.

Coco Chanel once said, “a girl should be two things: classy and fabulous,” - this really was the ethos of her collections, and is still

followed today by designer for the house, Karl Lagerfeld. Practical, yet feminine. Her accessories, which have become so popular, like the quilted bag, see the high-street every year try to recreate something similar, so everyone can try to have a little bit of luxury.

And as she once said, “a women who doesn’t wear perfume, has no future”. Coco clearly believed strongly about fragrance and was the first to place a designer name onto a perfume. Now the ranges are an essential layer of the Chanel House.

Celebrities sign up in their droves to become part of the Chanel group, with striking actress Keira Knightly being the face of perfume Coco Mademoiselle. The most recent to head up a campaign will be Lilly Allen for new handbag range Coco Cocoon in an Audrey Hepburn-esque shoot, coming out in October. Brit women a clear favourite with the luxury French brand, Chanel is actually very British, with the use of block pattern, tweed and neat tailoring. Since the film, everyone wants a little piece of Chanel. As the women said herself, “fashion fades, only style remains the same” and Chanel is a brand of pure style. Though she died in 1971 her legacy lives on in the form of Karl Lagerfeld, who since joining the group turned the sales in fashion around from 6% to 50% reinforcing the dominance that the Chanel House has on fashion.

Emma Watson Fronts the New Burberry Campaign Burberry was the brainchild of draper’s apprentice Thomas Burberry.

He opened his first shop in 1856 in Basingstoke, and now the brand has 153 years under their belt. Burberry is not only one of Britain’s best-loved labels, its also got the Royal seal of approval and given us the trench coat and a trademark check (they also invented Gabardine, a waterproof, tear proof and breathable fabric). All in all it’s a classic, beautiful brand. The achievement of the brand culminated this May when three 50 foot long neon Burberry signs were placed on top of their new American headquarters, at the coveted Madison Avenue address in New York. Since Christopher Bailey became creative director in 2001 Burberry has quite literally never looked better.

Burberry is nothing if not iconic, because of their long history and the fact their renowned for exquisite tailoring. Which is why, over the years, they have used British icons in their ad campaigns. Kate Moss has been in many, and even after Burberry dropped her due to the cocaine scandal they reinstated her, there was just no getting away from the fact she is a fashion symbol of Britain. More recently though quirky model, Agyness Deyn headed up the campaign for their fragrance The Beat, (choosing yet another

Brit-girl). But, now comes the turn of new fashion darling Emma Watson. Though she is signed with Storm model agency she is first and foremost an actress, which gives the adverts a realistic edge.

So girls can believe that this is beauty and style that’s attainable.

Bailey succinctly describes (on their website) his AW09-10 collection as, “timeless quality, quiet luxury. A celebration of our history, our icons and the modernity of Burberry today.” Emma Watson is thus the perfect choice, she’s young, she’s fresh and she’s a true English rose; she’s also down-to-earth saying how her Grandma will be most pleased about her recent admittance into the Burberry family.

The adverts shot by the world-renowned photographer Mario Testino are simple and beautiful. Shot in Westminster, the heart of London, they wanted to shoot at the place where the new head quarters were, showing who they are and where they come from. Burberry is truly a stunning brand that merges classic and modern perfectly, constantly reinventing their signature trench coat by adapting and changing it season upon season. Emma Watson is not the first or the last beauty that will be famed by the iconic brand, but perhaps the success shows a move into using icons rather than iconic models for the future, this openness to change will surely be what brings another 150 years of success to the company.

Back to the 80’s

If you’re reading this as a student, you’re most probably an 80’s child, missing out on the weed smoking free-love of the 60’s and the disco-dancing, Studio 54 era of the 70’s. But the 80’s had its pluses to: shoulder pads, pattern, neon colours, back combed hair and in terms of make up, big bold eyes. And now all these looks have come flooding back. You no longer have to live it in a romper suit but can properly cut up the dance floor listening to the musical soundings of Duran Duran, though perhaps it’s best not to go that far.

Where clothes are concerned, the main 80’s looks designers went for this A/W were pattern, big shoulders and big hair, as well as a little neon. One man who fully went back to the past was Marc Jacobs. A designer who never fails to impress, sending audiences into a tizzy as they try to work out just what his influences are, thus he sets the fashion bar high. When he sets a trend, you know it’s time to follow. His models strutted out with major quiffs and neon-coloured clothes; showing fashion is becoming fun again, hallelujah. Taking the lead from New York, London based designers Ashish and Basso & Brooke also went all out 80’s.

Ashish did it by bringing the circus to London town, it was pom-poms everywhere, and again there was colour. This time round it took the form of zebra printed wedges; black and yellow

tiger print sequinned leggings and jumpers with epaulettes creating the boxy shoulder silhouette (very reminiscent of the 80’s). If Jacobs and Ashish put the double f back in fun fashion for the younger generation, Basso & Brooke took to doing the trend in a more understated way, an outfit for everyone. Digital prints galore, as it always is with this duo, but the dresses and jackets were completely wearable, brightening up the greyest of winter days, putting pattern back into the Fall wardrobes. The pair mesmerised the audience as eyes tried to focus on the models sauntering down the runway, colours flashed passed and blurred into one, such is the power of Basso & Brooke.

As Kylie once sang, ‘I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky.

I should be so lucky in love’ and she was right, we’re lucky to be able to fall back in love with an era that left 20 years ago. Why? The 80’s were all about experimenting and this is the element that the designers were getting at, have fun with colour, try out different patterns and exaggerate the looks. Place the wacky with the wackier and somehow it will all gel together in a perfect ensemble.

It’s time to have fun and embrace ‘the bigger the better’ side of the 80’s, but please, no shell suits.

Bee in Your Bonnet

Fashion isn’t all champagne and kisses. Here designers and students get to have a bitch about the fastidious world of fashion.

Piers Atkinson, Milliner: “The least pleasant element is the arrogant and neurotic colleagues. But they exist everywhere. I try and avoid them.”

Yasmin Rizvi, Milliner: “I hate the lack of time.”

Jane Taylor, Milliner: “It’s such a small industry, everyone knows everyone else, and it’s very competitive. All the best-known milliners are men. Male milliners seem to create more sculptural show stopping pieces that are memorable but hard to wear. I’m going to change this.”

Alice Cuffe, MA Fashion Journalism: “I hate the inevitable fact that sooner or later Victoria Beckham will be a fully-fledged designer, and that Sienna Miller is still one!”

Leah Chablin, MA Fashion Journalism: “What annoys me with the fashion industry is that being the “daughter of...” is enough to be a fashion icon these days, when people with real talent get ignored. Thinking of the Geldolfs and all their London friends. Fashion is not about talent anymore it’s about a name and it’s stupid, it shouldn’t be like this.”

Louise Norman, BA Fashion Photography: “I hate the fashion industry for promoting this skeletal image to young women and that most of the high street shops don’t stock a range of clothes for women of all shapes and sizes.”

Nula Katsikia, MA Fashion Management and Marketing: “Girls from 14 to 20 all dress in the same way. They don’t differ at all! It’s like they don’t have a personality! I would like to see the fashion industry help them to show their personality by choosing different clothes.”

Julia Koegel, MA Fashion Management and Marketing: “What I don’t like about the fashion industry is that all high streets are becoming more and more the same, in every town there are nearly exactly the same chains. Where is the individuality?”

Kay Pratt BA Fine Art: “I hate the fashion industry because they think people like Kate Moss are beautiful when really they’re just a bit rough.”

Heather Jefferies, BA Fine Art: “A lot of stuff you see on the catwalks is silly and would never be worn in real life.”

Clo Marshall, BA Interior Design: “I hate that people feel they have to follow trends so closely and they’re not encouraged to wear what suits them.”

Bethan Jackson, BA Fashion Design: “I hate the fashion industry because it’s fickle.”

C. C. Bloom, BA Fashion Promotion and Imaging: “I hate the fact that everyone lies about what they eat...they say that they eat pizza and chips but you know they just love coke!”