Auroro Ozma and Moddy Farrell Headonism milliners
For the first day of London Fashion Week A/W’13, the hat showcase of the LFW exhibition, supported by Royal Ascot called Headonism, opened with suitable amount of fanfare on Friday. The five milliners who are taking part are Piers Atkinson, William Chambers, Moody and Farrell, Emma Yeo and Aurora Ozma.
We caught up with Britain's (if not the world’s) greatest milliner, and figurehead (sorry!) for the Headonism movement, Stephen Jones, for a quick chat about what’s great about Headonism this season and the state of British hats these days. Oh – and a certain pop star you might have heard of? David Bowie.
Stephen has been involved in the Headonism project since it launched a few years ago. His highlight this season? The young new talent involved. ‘Well, I’m thrilled with the line-up this season. We’ve got five fantastic milliners, and three new girls. It’s wonderful to have female milliners – they have a completely different take on making hats. They come at it from a different point of view.’
We also wanted to know Stephen’s views on a certain wave of Bowie nostalgia sweeping the country at the moment, what with the up-coming retrospective at the V&A, other exhibitions, such as Glam Rock at the Tate in Liverpool and general resurgence all things Seventies glam. ‘Well I come from Liverpool and I grew up loving David Bowie. I went to see him play live in 1972. I’ve been a fan ever since I bought the Hunky Dory album.’
Stephen went on; ‘David Bowie is an absolute creative genius and he deserves to be celebrated. What he did by bringing together fashion, performance and music in that way, nobody else was doing, and now it’s the normal thing to do for a popstar, but it wasn’t then, he was the first one to do it.’
'So I’m not surprised for the nostalgia for that era at the moment, because it was a truly great time for fashion and music.’ Did Stephen work with Bowie on any hats at all? We wondered. ‘Yes I’ve made David Bowie a few hats. There were some trilbies I made him years ago and I also made all the hats for the Ashes to Ashes video’ [An absolutely legendary pop video that frequently tops polls of ‘greatest ever videos of all time’ type things, along with Michael Jackson’s Thriller]. What a genius.
We also caught up with one of the new generation of milliners, William Chambers, who confirmed for us both; what a positive effect being part of Headonism has had on his career so far, and also – what an absolute legend Mr Jones is. ‘He’s helped us all so much with his mentoring and advice’ said William, ‘as well as being one of the nicest men you could ever hope to meet'.
We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.
Via: Stephen Jones On Making Hats For David Bowie And Mentoring Milliners
