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Making Hats For Rio Fashion Rocks 2009 And Kylie Minogue US Tour.London, Part 4.
In the middle of all the frenzy of making hats for various designers during global Fashion Weeks, I had encountered one of the most difficult projects yet - head gear for Rio Fashion Rocks 2009. I would have to say that out of all the challenges, this was the most serious one. So far, I have been able to get only few pictures of the hats I worked on. I don't know if I ever mentioned before, but I almost never worked with feathers prior to this project, at list not on this scale. Mainly, because it is such a pain to order them and the quality is more often very poor. So, imagine my pure horror when the boxes with 300 pheasant feathers arrived. All feathers well over 1 meter long.
Each one had to be carefully checked for damage and each one of them had to be hand colored in 6 different shades. For example, 50 feathers had to be colored red, 50-yellow, 50-purple and so on. Coloring feathers is a whole other science and not an easy one. Everything matters: temperature of the solution, time in the solution - if the feather kept in the solution for even a few seconds longer than needed, you might just as well through it out. As soon as the feather is out of the coloring solution it has to be hand dried and fluffed. Very time consuming and tiring process! The funny part about all of it is that for days after coloring feathers my hands were almost black and blue with shades of purple, red and yellow :-) Unfortunate side effect of being a milliner - hands suffer the most.
Mr. Jones came up with mind blowing sketches, but to realise them was entire different story.
For each hat very complicated and precise wire structures had to go in place, extra support in heavy elastic bands had to be added due to the fact that each hat was expected to be tremendously heavy. Afterwords, each feather had to be attached one by one, secured and tested. My hat is off to the models who not only had to wear enormous heavy head gear, but walk on sky high heels and dance! Fantastic event. Rio definitely knows how to party.:-)))P.S. Turns out, blue feathered hat was to heavy even for a short walk on the catwalk. Stylists decided to use it as wings rather than hat.:-)))
In the middle of production for both London and Paris Fashion Weeks I was so very excited to work on head pieces for Kylie Minogue North American Tour 2009. Kylie is very petite, she also has the smallest head measurements I have ever seen. Beautiful lady, definitely a fighter and a very strong spirited person. :-)
Fantastic Pirate hat (sorry, I was not able to find the picture) and outlandish hats for dancers are,probably, my top favorites in terms of design and materials. For example, 6 so-called "Roxette" hats had to be made for Kylie's dancers. The design of "Roxette" hat belongs, of course, to Mr.Jones. As a matter of fact, you will be able to find the picture of it in his book "Hats. An Anthology". I had so much fun cutting colored film into stripes, mixing colors and then creating a hat-wig you see above and even giving it a hair cut! :-). I have to say that in person this type of hat looks much more appealing and makes a lot of funny noise! :-)
I thought I would say couple of words about the creation of this piece: this is a great example of the range of materials and skills professional milliner and artist has to have. At first, millinery wire structure is calculated and assembled. Then the same structure had to be duplicated but this time - in silver plated steel . This little sparkling balls are actually tennis balls, each one of them had to be covered in crystals by hand! Isn't the result amazing ?
The project was so exciting that at some point I had to stop and wrap my mind around the fact that I really got to do what I love on such an amazing professional level. I also noticed that by that time hats completely invaded my being: I breathed hats, I thought of hats, I even saw them in my dreams, but more often I was so excited I was completely unable to sleep. I would stay up all night drawing hats for my new Collection. This excitement did not serve me well - at the end I was completely and utterly exhausted. But still - I think exhaustion was a very small price to pay for this out of this world experience. :-)
In the middle of all the frenzy of making hats for various designers during global Fashion Weeks, I had encountered one of the most difficult projects yet - head gear for Rio Fashion Rocks 2009. I would have to say that out of all the challenges, this was the most serious one. So far, I have been able to get only few pictures of the hats I worked on. I don't know if I ever mentioned before, but I almost never worked with feathers prior to this project, at list not on this scale. Mainly, because it is such a pain to order them and the quality is more often very poor. So, imagine my pure horror when the boxes with 300 pheasant feathers arrived. All feathers well over 1 meter long.
Mr. Jones came up with mind blowing sketches, but to realise them was entire different story.For each hat very complicated and precise wire structures had to go in place, extra support in heavy elastic bands had to be added due to the fact that each hat was expected to be tremendously heavy. Afterwords, each feather had to be attached one by one, secured and tested. My hat is off to the models who not only had to wear enormous heavy head gear, but walk on sky high heels and dance! Fantastic event. Rio definitely knows how to party.:-)))P.S. Turns out, blue feathered hat was to heavy even for a short walk on the catwalk. Stylists decided to use it as wings rather than hat.:-)))
In the middle of production for both London and Paris Fashion Weeks I was so very excited to work on head pieces for Kylie Minogue North American Tour 2009. Kylie is very petite, she also has the smallest head measurements I have ever seen. Beautiful lady, definitely a fighter and a very strong spirited person. :-)
Fantastic Pirate hat (sorry, I was not able to find the picture) and outlandish hats for dancers are,probably, my top favorites in terms of design and materials. For example, 6 so-called "Roxette" hats had to be made for Kylie's dancers. The design of "Roxette" hat belongs, of course, to Mr.Jones. As a matter of fact, you will be able to find the picture of it in his book "Hats. An Anthology". I had so much fun cutting colored film into stripes, mixing colors and then creating a hat-wig you see above and even giving it a hair cut! :-). I have to say that in person this type of hat looks much more appealing and makes a lot of funny noise! :-)
I thought I would say couple of words about the creation of this piece: this is a great example of the range of materials and skills professional milliner and artist has to have. At first, millinery wire structure is calculated and assembled. Then the same structure had to be duplicated but this time - in silver plated steel . This little sparkling balls are actually tennis balls, each one of them had to be covered in crystals by hand! Isn't the result amazing ?
The project was so exciting that at some point I had to stop and wrap my mind around the fact that I really got to do what I love on such an amazing professional level. I also noticed that by that time hats completely invaded my being: I breathed hats, I thought of hats, I even saw them in my dreams, but more often I was so excited I was completely unable to sleep. I would stay up all night drawing hats for my new Collection. This excitement did not serve me well - at the end I was completely and utterly exhausted. But still - I think exhaustion was a very small price to pay for this out of this world experience. :-)
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