ALBERTUS SWANEPOEL

If you want to get ahead, get a hat. More specifically, get a hat from fashion’s favourite milliner, Albertus Swanepoel. Swanepoel is a South African-born milliner living and working in New York, where he produces some of the most well-worn hats in the world.

Well... Well-worn, or worn well? His hats have graced the heads of Brad Pitt, Emma Watson, and Adwoa Aboah in editorial and cover shoots. He has also collaborated with the darlings of New York fashion design, including Carolina Herrera, Alexander Wang, and Proenza Schoeler.

As for the designs themselves, Swanepoel’s hats tend to embody simple, Ameri- cana shapes in elevated form. The Duckie hat is a baseball cap reimagined in an oversized shape and hand blocked in fur felt. The Black Sheep is a wittily-craft- ed, silk-lined trapper made in soft faux fur.

By Swanepoel’s

own qualifications, his designs are “about being handmade (not homemade), witty (not funny) and nowadays (not nostalgic)". Swanepoel currently resides in a Manhattan apartment he shares with his life and business partner, Eddie Marquez, and their cat Pooks.