![This master milliner believes a hat gives a person confidence, saying “hats are totally transformative”. After 40 years ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170818132309/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/u/6/y/h/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gxb2wx.png/1503023901530.jpg)
When The Australian Financial Review Magazine meets Londoner Stephen Jones in the bar of the swanky Hotel Marignan, smack bang in the centre of the Golden Triangle in Paris, it feels appropriate to be toasting his centenary, albeit with mineral water.
In May, Jones clocked up two milestones that add up to 100 years for the millinery maestro: his 40th anniversary of hat making and his 60th birthday, marked with a gala dinner at London fashion-pack favourite Bistrotheque.
“I had a 100th birthday so I celebrated with 120 of my closest friends,” he laughs. “I had all the fashion people [an international who’s who including writers Suzy Menkes, Tim Blanks, Hilary Alexander and Hamish Bowles] but unfortunately Maria Grazia wasn’t able to come because she was in preparation for couture, although she wanted to.”
Maria Grazia is, of course, Maria Grazia Chiuri, the artistic director of Christian Dior. Jones created the hats for the luxury brand’s haute couture show in Paris in July, which took place the day before we meet, and today he’s wearing one of the jaunty Dior berets straight off the runway, along with a navy suit, a floral shirt and a pair of Converse sneakers customised with studs by a designer friend. But it’s the beret I notice first.
![“People see a hat as soon as you walk into the room, which is what makes it such a powerful accessory,” says Stephen Jones.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170818132309/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/u/6/y/r/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1502420107511.jpg)
“People see a hat as soon as you walk into the room, which is what makes it such a powerful accessory,” says Jones. “You could have an interesting shoe on or be carrying an interesting handbag, but those things are a little more hidden. And the reality is people don’t wear hats every day, so when somebody is wearing even a simple beret like this one it’s a major statement.”
40 years of hat making
Jones has been creating major hat statements since the late 1970s when, as a student at Central Saint Martin’s fashion school, he began designing them for friends to wear to underground nightclub Blitz, the haunt of Boy George and Bananarama’s Siobhan Fahey, which spawned the New Romantic movement. “They couldn’t be too big because you couldn’t dance wearing something too heavy, but my girlfriends used to phone me the next day and say ‘I met someone new, so thank you for the hat’.”
A tailoring internship at Mayfair couture house Lachasse followed, but Jones found himself drawn to the millinery workroom next door.
“I was fascinated that they were making these solid objects, because what freaked me out at Saint Martins was all of this loose fabric falling over a sewing machine,” he says. “I’d always loved making objects: my father was an engineer and my mother designed gardens, so genetically it was putting all of this together.”
![“You can be a working mother and put a hat on and suddenly feel super glamorous, but you can also be a 15-year-old boy ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170818132309/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/u/6/y/m/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1502420101690.jpg)
In 1980, he opened a millinery salon in Covent Garden. Today his retail boutique, design studio and workshop are in a Georgian townhouse nearby. He’s made hats for everyone from Madonna, Rihanna and Kylie Minogue, to the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of Cambridge. Celebs, royalty or “real” people: Jones believes there is a hat for every head.
“You can be a working mother and put a hat on and suddenly feel super glamorous, but you can also be a 15-year-old boy who is not confident and you put a hat on and feel like a rock star,” he says. “Hats are totally transformative.”
Berets 'the T-shirts' of hats
Jones has also hatted models on the catwalks of Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and Comme des Garçons, but it’s the democracy of the Dior berets he’s relishing right now. “The beret is the T-shirt of hats,” he says. “It’s young, old, rich, poor and male, female, child; everybody suits a beret and it’s that universality I love.”
The milliner’s next Dior project brings him to Australia to install the hats in the exhibition The House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture at the National Gallery of Victoria.
More than 140 garments from Christian Dior couture feature in the exhibition that spans creations from 1947 to 2017 by Dior and the six successive designers following his death, including Yves Saint Laurent, John Galliano and the House’s current and first female head designer, Chiuri. It also explores Dior’s unique affinity with Australia, including the historic spring 1948 fashion parade at David Jones in Sydney, the first time a full Dior collection was shown outside Paris.
“We think of Australia as being the other side of the world now, but can you imagine how far away it felt back then?” says Jones, who has visited before. “The idea of getting on a plane to go there must have felt like going to a moon.”
It turns out Jones could almost have flown the models there himself: “A good friend of my father’s was in the air force and he gave me all these flying lessons so I could get my private pilot’s licence,” he says. “It’s expired now, but I can fly a plane.” Could he fly us back from Paris to his home in London? “I think it would be safer if we walked,” he laughs.
The AFR Magazine Fashion Issue is out Friday, August 28, inside The Australian Financial Review.