“This piece continues the tradition of sewn straw, but by using leather, our straw sewer could be employed for the whole year.”

“Granny always wore hats and as a child I would go with her to Madame Julienne, her milliner in London. The mechanics of the workshop fascinated me, jump twenty years and I’m taking an evening class at The Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, where i was living at the time, simply to make a hat for myself. We were taught the tradition of hat production as opposed to one-offs and a light went on in my head, this was how i was going to make money for me and my daughter to live. Another student, Lipp Holmfeld, and I became friends and later business partners, we started making hats together to further our skills. In 1974 we got a surprise credit in Vogue through a hat we had made for Lipp’s friend of a friend and things took off from there.”