In the eyes of world-renowned milliner Stephen Jones, hats are the punctuation of fashion. Like a shrewdly positioned comma, a hat can bring a whole new meaning to a couture ensemble that never before existed. In a career spanning almost three decades, Stephen has provided the punctuation for fashion’s elite (including John Galliano, Marc Jacobs, Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo) with his millinery creations gracing the world’s most coveted catwalks, and he has also created hats for personalities such as Boy George and Kylie Minogue. Most recently, the talented milliner has channelled his talents and passion for hats into an exhibition for London’s V&A Museum, Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones, which will take up residence at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art from March 27.
How did the exhibition evolve?
It started out with the idea that
I would just come in and look at some hats based on the archive at the V&A. Then, gradually, it became a bigger and bigger thing and was moved from the costume gallery to the contemporary gallery, so we received more funding. I was also given a fabulous co-curator, Oriole Cullen. Suddenly, everyone
got onboard. The V&A is such a huge institution, some of it was catalogued and some of it wasn’t – they didn’t even know where some of it was. When I first went in there, I had no real idea what I was going to do at all. We just took each day as it came and went into the big cupboards and I think we ended up looking at around 3,000 hats. Then I started to go around the world and look at different collections in America and at private collections in France and Italy. I didn’t want it to be a very esoteric exhibition that only fashion nuts would understand. I wanted something that was,
in a funny way, demystifying fashion but showing that it really is a wonderful mystery that still can be hugely enjoyable for everybody.
What aspects of a person’s physical appearance or personality inspire your designs?
It’s always about designing with somebody. I think fashion designers always have to impose their vision on the world or on people, dictating that they should look a certain way. If you’re a milliner you have to have a vision, but you also have to be a very good listener. That’s the most interesting part of it – somehow combining a person’s character with the design. Everybody is different. Sometimes people want hats to be just like they are, but sometimes people want hats to make them look like somebody different. They might feel like a mum 364 days of the year but on this day they want
to look like a glamourpuss. Hats are like costumes and often it’s about being a good amateur psychoanalyst – finding out who someone is inside
and who they aspire to be.
Working with so many different high-profile designers, how do you come up with something that complements their distinct visions?
It’s actually the same thing as working with a private client – it’s about being a good listener. Often they don’t really know about hats, so what I’m trying to do is interpret what they would like to have while bringing my experience to the table. For example, working with John Galliano is completely different to working with Rei Kawakubo from Comme des Garcons, but what you really do is celebrate that difference. They’re completely different people.
In a strange way, you just try to interpret the relationship you have with that person into a hat.
Fashion designers often get a bad rap from the media. Working with them as closely as you do, do you think it’s unwarranted?
Sometimes it’s with good reason, but Rae, or John, or Marc Jacobs, or Ralph Lauren, they are all very thankful for the way their lives have turned out. They are absolutely humble because they realise how easy it could be for them to have a different life. You have to work hard, be talented and be lucky while also making your own luck – and even those things mightn’t work. They really appreciate their good fortune and are always prepared to learn.
Which era in fashion history captures your heart the most?
I think probably the 1940s during the war, just because people didn’t have money or resources so they had to be completely inventive. In Britain, people were remaking 1930s clothes or men’s jackets into hats. Or in France, they weren’t allowed to have any materials and all of the German officers’ wives were wearing very chic Parisian hats, so all the Parisian girls were wearing huge turbans to make themselves look different. They would literally take
a curtain and wind it up and put it on their head. Old second-hand materials are often the most beautiful. In the Dior Haute Couture show earlier this year, for the beginning of the show we made a kind of riding hat, but all of the veils we used were antique veils that we got from the flea markets in Paris. They were from the beginning of the last century – they just don’t make anything as beautiful as that anymore.
What was your childhood dream?
I wanted to do something creative; that was all. I was good at art and painting – that came very naturally to my family. My mother is a great colourist and my father is a wonderful illustrator. But really, my dream was just to come to London and go to exciting parties!
What has been your greatest challenge to date?
If you love what you’re doing, the things you do that should be a challenge seem to melt away. You don’t worry about being tired, or not being able to pay the bills. You feel very privileged because you are able to do what you love. I always think the biggest challenge is people. I’m not just a milliner by myself; I work with a workroom and so always the biggest challenge is to be able to explain things and work with people. But that’s also the joy too.
What has been your greatest achievement?
I think it is the V&A exhibition. I was just doing what I loved and it turned into this whole big thing. I think that’s probably my greatest achievement.
What is success to you?
It’s about being creatively fulfilled and being able to get a cab into work like I did this morning! Also, there are so many other wonderful milliners, some of whom are in the exhibition, who have come through my workroom. To be able to share a bit of my knowledge and enthusiasm with people and to help train them is a great pleasure.
Why do you care?
In the early eighties just after I left college, I had a whole group of friends and we were always going out together – we were coming out of the nightmare of the miners’ strikes and the depression and recessions that were going on in Britain in the seventies. My friends and I felt sort of invincible, almost as if we could do anything. Then suddenly, in ‘83/’84, AIDS was discovered and that stopped me and my generation in our tracks. So many of our friends were dying and nobody knew what was going on – it was really scary. So after that, I really learned to appreciate each day that came. I think that’s also part of growing up. I really began to appreciate what I had and felt very lucky to be able to be involved in the world of hats and to do what I wanted to do.
What inspires you?
Certainly the designers I work with, like Marc Jacobs, John Galliano and Rei Kawakubo. But then I never stop being inspired. I don’t have a muse, because I’m very good at making something suit a particular person. If I had a muse, it would suit only her and nobody else. Literally every waking moment inspires me. It can be a fabulous person, a great designer, going to a museum, getting up in the morning, a cup of coffee or a conversation. It tends usually to be a person, or a film or architecture.
What are your words of wisdom?
Don’t look before you leap. If you think too much about it, it will terrify you! Just get on with things and it will all work out fine.
Interview by Mikki Brammer
Photograph: Stephen Jones and John Galliano put the finishing touches on a model for Christian Dior’s Haute Couture, autumn/winter 2008 © Sophie Carre
