A head start on style

THIS year will go down in the annals of fashion as the year the hat was hot.

And much of the credit goes — fanfare please — to one of our fellow citizens, milliner Philip Treacy.

The wedding of newly-anointed style icon Kate Middleton to Prince William sparked a frenzy of millinery madness, encapsulated in the extraordinary Treacy confection worn by Princess Beatrice. It brought to mind the old insult: ‘Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style. It will look just as ridiculous year after year.’ Yet within days, the “unique sculptural celebratory headpiece in delicate tea rose silk” — or the pretzel toilet seat, as it was more commonly known — had notched up 150,000 followers on Facebook and raised almost €95,000 for charity when it was auctioned on eBay.

Galway man Treacy, milliner of choice for London’s most stylish heads, had an impressive tally of 36 hats at the Royal Wedding, including the one worn by Victoria Beckham. Treacy’s designs will be much in evidence in Galway next week, where the great man himself is sponsoring the Ladies Day Best Hat Competition on Thursday at the g Hotel. Sticking with the royal wedding theme, first prize is a customised variation on Posh’s wedding pillbox, fashioned by the maestro’s own fair hand.

Chapeau fever reached France earlier this month. The Paris catwalk turned hatwalk as every outfit in the Chanel couture show featured a titfer in some form. The message from Kaiser Karl Lagerfeld was loud and clear — If you want to get ahead, get a hat.

Celestine McCoy of Hattitude in Kinsale believes the royal wedding simply tapped into a trend that had been slowly bubbling for the past two years.

“The wedding gave a huge boost to milliners around the world but women were already becoming more confident about wearing a hat, and more used to commissioning one as a key component of their outfit rather than adding it as an afterthought. You don’t have to spend a fortune. If you get your accessories right, you can turn around a very plain dress, put something striking on your head and look a million dollars without breaking the bank. A hat is a great style investment. Your feet and your head are the only body parts that stay the same size throughout your adult life, and a well-made hat can be unstitched and remodelled time and again.”

Celestine’s shop on Kinsale’s Main Street in Co Cork is like a sweetie shop for grown ups, with mouth-watering colours and fabrics, feathers and flowers, and pearls and crystals adorning every surface. She started making hats for friends while working as a nurse in Dublin, studying millinery and design in her spare time. It wasn’t until she married and moved to Kinsale that she decided — encouraged by her entrepreneur husband Jim — to open her own shop. Two years on, Celestine’s number is on speed dial for some of Ireland’s most stylish women.

“I get a real buzz when I spot one of my hats at a big race meeting on television, or in a magazine spread from a glamorous social event. I am working on one for a garden party at Buckingham Palace later this month. I had 8 hats at Ascot in June, and I have had huge orders for the Galway Races. In the week before Galway last year I was working on 15 different hats which were all ordered at the last minute. ”

For those of a nervous disposition who are not ready to give a hat a permanent home, Secretchic.ie will hire you one for a trial run. One of Secretchic’s hats-for-hire even makes Weekend’s cover this week. Owner Sarah Carberry says she has been inundated with inquiries from women inspired by the royal wedding.

“The trend is for disc-shaped pieces tilted over the forehead or to the side of the head, as favoured by Carole Middleton and Zara Philips, to Victoria Beckham’s navy chapeau for a more dramatic look. Saucer shapes are popular dressed up with feathers, flowers, netting and crystals. They are easy to wear and don’t hide the face for photographs.”

In the interests of investigative journalism — and because she had always wanted to have a go — Weekend sent Alice de la Cour to unleash her inner Mad Hatter under the tutelage of Celestine McCoy.

“For years, the only person I knew who wore a hat was my granny going to Mass and, believe me, I wouldn’t under any circumstances be caught wearing one of those,” says Alice. “Always black with a hatpin stuck in the side, it looked dangerous rather than stylish. When I first saw Philip Treacy’s work, I realised hats could be beautiful as well as functional. When Celestine opened her shop in Kinsale, the seed was planted. I had to make my own hat.”

As a talented painter with an eye for colour and proportion, Alice had a head start, so to speak. Celestine shared some of the cardinal rules of millinery. “A wide brimmed hat on a small person is a no-no. Structured hats sit well with more formal tailoring, while a fascinator perfectly complements a summer dress. Play against your face shape. Round faces suit more angular styles, and long faces should avoid high crowns. And finally, be confident. You wear the hat — don’t let the hat wear you!”

Alice opted for a dramatic combination of fuchsia and lime green to complement her own strong natural colouring. Celestine guided her through the complex process of blocking, during which the woven straw fabric is stiffened and moulded to give the hat shape. The work is painstaking and, says Alice, occasionally painful. “I’m fairly handy with a needle and thread but the work is so intricate that I lost count of the number of times I stabbed my fingers. But once I started to achieve the look I was after, the time just flew.”

Four hours later, Alice was the proud owner of an exclusive de la Cour design, resplendent with flowers from her garden. It will have its first outing at Galway this week. Alice’s advice to any budding milliners is draw a plan, choose colours carefully, buy the best possible material and use a thimble!