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For my collection, what to do? Which theme, what mood, colour, line or proportion? Will the buyers from Saks 5th Ave, Harvey Nics and Isetan like it? What will Lucinda think and will Miss Piaggi have something charming to perch on her head? I always have too many ideas, the problem is to edit. I love a simple wool beanie just as much as concepts in perspex. Challenging or familiar, beautiful or a dollop of bad taste, chic or goofy?

About six months ago, for the first time in 15 years, I made contact with my friend Nita, an '80s Westwood Finnish supermodel and we had a 3-hour-long tête á tête. When I first knew her, she was a wild child but now she has a business and a family. 'I have two children, I run 10 kilometres a day and drink a bottle of vodka every Friday.' She mentioned that her husband was from Lapland and I told her that I had always been fascinated by their traditional multicoloured clothing. Apparently, it is their interpretation of the most amazing, and beautiful of natural phenomena: the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis. My collection is based around this conversation and is called quite simply, 'North'.

Wind the clock forward to January 2002...



(I guessed I was on the right latitude when John asked for 35 wild and woolly hats for the Christian Dior Haute Couture, to be designed, toiled, made and tweaked in 10 days!)

I research the peoples who live within the Arctic Circle; Nordics, Siberians and Inuits and this develops into 82 hats: among them a velvet trilby called 'Murmansk', a baseball cap like an igloo (complete with Eskimo hat pin) and a plastic wig called 'Roxette'. The heads of my three workrooms Deborah, Sally and Craig stitch and steam night and day to make the collection. Lesley dyes furs and feathers in magical Aurora Borealis colours whilst Darryl conjures ribbon from Tokyo, satin from Florence and felt from Luton! The collection looks fabulous and after an all-nighter I stitch the final label into a white cloche at 8a.m. just before it is whisked away by Cat to London Fashion Week. So 'North' is born without too many dramas and tantrums.

London Fashion Week is also the party season but because I am a masochist and work to crazy schedules and deadlines, I can only dip my toe into the social whirl. At the Taboo party, all us punk/New Romantics skeletons come out of the woodwork: David and Stevie of Bodymap, Queen Viv, Stephen Leonard, Phillip Sallon and Boy George... And on to the Jil Sander party where I get giddy with a heady combo. of liquor, disco and dodgems.



Running concurrently with this frenzied activity are collections for other dress designers. In London I am collaborating with two: Julien Macdonald and Raphael Lopez. Raphael is a hoot and models hats with aplomb. We decide on two shapes. A pert little felt number called 'Bitch' and a skull cap in mink; the ultimate in Barcelona-meets-London chic. To my dismay, few of these winning hats are used in the show, so one particular stylist from across the pond is firmly off my Christmas card list.

  

Julien's show is fab. This season we repeat for him a hat we did for Joanie during her Dynasty years and another hat bears the moniker 'Mary J'. Kate Phelan the stylist is a dream to work with (thank heavens) and the hats co-ordinate perfectly with the Macdonald brand of razamatazz.



I am writing this in the Eurostar on the way to Paris. I just saw Julien grinning like a Cheshire or rather Welsh cat, basking in the glow of his great reviews. He is going to Givenchy, I am off to my second home, my workroom at Dior. In the midst of London Fashion Week mayhem, I did pop to Paris twice last week to see Mr Galliano for briefings, gossip and an infusion of the Avenue Montaigne. I think my ashes should be spread in the Chunnel: after all, I spend more time there than anywhere else!

Anyway, Dear Reader, next stop on the fashion carousel Milan, for Brioni, Berardi and Anna Piaggi's millinery frivolities!

UURGGHHH!
4:30 A.m. - waking up. I can't speak or think. My mind is a swirl of tiredness and pain! I was up until 2 o'clock last night, tie-dyeing dresses for Dior (my additional new role for the house). Taxi. Check-in @ CDG. Air France. Sleep.



Ciao Darling... and suddenly I'm in a cab to Milan from the airport. How I got here I'm not sure; it's all a blur. Billboards flash past: Armani, Cavalli, Benetton. Dump my bags at the hotel and walk to La Piaggi's por un café. Anna is not yet dressed but wears a Paquin negligee with a Dior fur wrap. Her teddy bear is by Chanel, printed with Karl's doodles of her. Sunday morning at home. She shows me the Brioni press release on which we collaborated (Stephen Jones for Brioni) and says the other Milano show, that my studio supplied hats for Stefano Guerriero, was a hit. Later in the day even Alek Wek mentions the hats. By the way, have you ever seen her dead ringer of a younger brother? 16 and 6ft 8inches!



On to the Antonio Berardi fittings. Tony and I have worked together since his second show in 1997. This season he said he wanted something very Anna, et voila, the flying mini-trilby and its full sized extravagantly trimmed big sister. On to the show where Val & Mal do fab make-up & hair. The show is great but over in a flash and I can see that Tony is almost crying with stress, relief and the success of it all.

  

On to the Stephen Fairchild party at the Hotel Diana (otherwise known as Fashion Central), where the entire fashion world had landed. Anna and I have supper in the lobby; pasta followed by chocolate and wasabi cake! A panoply of Voguettes, Suzy with disposable camera (will she ever publish her snaps?), Robert Forrest and Vincent Darré . all drop by. I am dizzy with tiredness and walk back to the hotel at midnight. In an arcade a soprano is busking, singing an Aria from Tosca. Another world. Italy.

EEEEEEEEK!



Up again at 04:30, for the flight back to Paris, sun rising over the Alps and my meeting with Galliano. Six days till the show and nothing decided yet!

Paris. The Big Kahuna. Working in Paris changed my life. When I first started I experienced some success in Britain but this was before the 'designer decade' and my work was too wacky for English tastes. So I took the 'plane to Paris and never looked back. In my first season in Paris I collaborated with Thierry Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier, followed by Comme des Garçons amongst others.

Now most of my work is with John Galliano. John & I met on a dancefloor somewhere back in the mists of time but we started to work together only when he came to Paris. Every season we re-write the millinery book so I knew that the show-stopping hats of the last Christian Dior haute couture show in January would be a hard act to follow.

  

(Here is the grandest and most glamorous hat workroom in the world. A miniature chateau in the Dior courtyard in the Avenue Montaigne.)

John's brief was 'funky folklore' so we worked up 3 different ideas. The first was a blend of a hat that my sister had made for me in Peru and a Mohican 'brush'. The next was an oversized version of John's felt trilby mounted on a balaclava and the last an Oxfam-inspired creased rabbit beret with torn veiling and daffy brooches. My personal favorite was an Ena Sharples-esque hairnet in pale salmon chenille with a gold veil - don't you love how her hat and make-up match her coat! All was going smoothly until I heard from Silvana, the head of my workroom at Dior that: "Les Pompons de José sont explosé"! Our supplier José was stiffening the Mohican 'brushes' for the hats and the alcohol vapour exploded, destroying the hats and his workroom in the process. So we had to re-start the 60 hats for the Dior show two days before the collection. They looked amazing and made newspaper front pages around the world. As John noted afterwards: "It's all about the hats!"

    

The Dior show was on the Thursday and Galliano followed on the Sunday but we still had not decided on the headgear. On Friday I waited for an appointment, but post Dior frenzy, we couldn't get everybody together. I was going quietly crazy; two days till the show and nothing decided!

  

Deborah the head of my workroom in London sounded increasingly panicked as the day progressed. (I can't write here what she said!) Eventually, I had an appointment Saturday morning the day before the show at 10.00. We decided on some shapes and the workrooms in London and Paris sprang into action. The final ten hats were only decided the morning of the show; but they were fabulous, breathtaking and original. Ai in her pillow hat of skunk fur and Valery in her enormous felt turban...



This was an extraordinary show, the clothes hair and make-up were beyond but I have to say this was also one of the most stressed days of my life!

After the show, my team and I were delirious and consumed our body weight in champagne. But lurking in the background of my mind was a bête noir of my final show of the season, Claude Montana. For 15 years Claude was my most dangerous liaison in Paris and together we made some of the most incredible hats. Since being the toast of Paris in the eighties he has had many ups and downs, but is back showing a new collection. After my intense life with John, it is strange to plunge into a completely different aesthetic. At Montana there is no mad cross-cultural mix, playful detailing and high-energy music, but a rigorously disciplined mood, tailoring that's cut-with-a-compass and sharply precise hats; visors, caps and a wig made from glass feathers.

  

Later that night is the only party of the Paris season that I am able to attend: a soirée for Stephane Marais who is launching his own make-up line. I first met Stephane at Montana many years ago and he later created make-up for Galliano and Dior. After weeks of hatting others, at last I get to wear a new hat too: an early sixties modernist Courreges-inspired bowler from Rellik in London. This is teamed with a St Laurent suit, (sorry Hedi) and an orchid corsage. Le tout Paris was there. Stella McCartney, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Gianbattista Valli, and then Vanessa Bellanger from Dior, Mandie Erickson from New York and two hundred other fashion luminaries. I sleep sweetly that night, carried away by my my ever present guardian angels and gin.

I wish I could offer you some fashion advice in the Vreeland vein; 'Why don't you...', but all I can think of is 'Why don't you have fun and wear a hat?', which is predictable to say the least. So I'll leave you with one of my favorite fashion quotes with from the 1940 George Cukor film 'The Women'.

Bonjour Mesdames, Mademoiselles. It gives me great pleasure to be your Cicerone on adventurous little voyage into fashion land. But today ladies as an innovation you will see the models go through the rhythmic movement of everyday life and you will be able to study the flow of the new line as it responds to the ever changing flow of the female form divine. Et maintenant our little peep into the coming season and a glimpse of the future too! Lumiere! Musique!

Next stop: holiday fun in Palm Springs!

I am not sure if this, my last 'Correspondent' feature, will seem more like a school holiday composition. I fear fashion tittle-tattle will be a little thin on the ground, but then again, you too should be having a holiday from that!

  

At the end of my fashion year in March I often go to Los Angeles where many of my contemporaries live, having switched from the impecunious London fashion scene to the Hollywood movie business. The holiday cast was a mix of Brits and Yanks. Detroit-born Vicki Sarge from London jewellers Erickson Beamon and her daughter Saffy, no sorry Beatrice, both fresh from Kabala class in San Diego with comedienne Sandra Bernhardt. Peter Kent, Interior designer and man about town (partner Hamish Bowles had been despatched by Anna Wintour for a feature on Amalfi Coast) and Craig West, milliner, sometime DJ and 'close friend' of yours truly...



  

Our plan was to party in LA with friends and then chill in Palm Springs, but when we arrived, LA was chillier than London so we immediately headed for the desert to 'Hope Springs', a mid-century spa owned by friends and managed by the fabulous hippy-dippy Nancy. It has geothermal springs which feed the 3 pools at different temperatures; hot, hotter and hottest! This is due to the fact that it is plonk on top of the San Andreas Fault line which runs through the bottom of the garden. So come the big earthquake, I advise that you get out of the pool sharpish. ...Suffice to say that the Fashion flim-flam of the past months simply and quietly evaporated in the desert sun.



  

We were joined by LA super-stylist Gitte Meldegaarde and one of her current beaux, video director Delaney. The days were spent in a mixture of lazing by the pool, visiting famous-architect-designed mid-century homes, thrift store shopping, and hiking in the desert amongst other curiosities. Evenings were spent at chi-chi watering holes as advised by Palm Springs resident Victor Rodriguez from Club Beige in LA. Floating in the pool at midnight under the stars, wafted by jasmine, and Mai Tai in hand, 'Poolside Cha Cha' tinkling in the background, I was as close to heaven as it gets.

  



After a few days, back to LA (through a sandstorm no less!) and party time started. Cosmos at the Akbar, the grooviest drinks club in Hollywood with film directors Leslie Libman (recently completed shooting the 'X Team'), and Kelly Evans (just started shooting 'Die Mommy Die!'), or Margheritas at the fabulous Dresden Room: a haven of James Bond crazy paving, stainless steel and white vinyl listening to resident swingers Marty and Elayne ('the jewel in the crown of the Hollywood entertainment circuit'). Flycat's graffiti art opening in Echo Park before hipster Club Echo, where curiously, Duran Duran is the music of choice and not forgetting Kiki's hip-hop party with veggie and vodka burgers, hic!

      

LA is my favourite place for shopping but not for Halston, Gucci and Fiorrucci, but the Downtown Mexican 'Alley'. Here are the most wonderful designer knock-offs and strange mutations too. A Louis Vuitton monogram print interspersed with Gucci 'G' for good measure, even Dior saddlebags (for $15 not $1500!). I head for the men's shops where Mexican pimps and low life buy strangely intense versions of designer fashion. Nightmare multi-coloured Versace style shirts with jacquard marijuana leaves and rifles in lamé ('as seen in Vogue'). This time I settled for a pimp zoot suit with a coat style jacket and high waist pants in brown polyester. The 28 gold buttons on it are in a faux baronial style, and in a grade of plastic which makes an Asda carrier bag feel like a Cartier lighter. Mmmm

    

My last days in LA are reserved for Kim Bowen. Kim and I left college at the same time in 1979 and started my hat company together. I made 'em and she wore 'em. Since then she has been a make up artist and editor of Harpers Bazaar Australia, written and styled for magazines worldwide and now is a stylist in LA. She did that fab En Vogue video years ago, works with Janet Jackson and in particular George Michael. She most recently costumed his single Freeeak(ish). Never knew he was into rubber... This week was helping Geri Halliwell for a private performance for Steven Spielberg. Kim is great to bounce ideas off and madly, we start to develop the kernel of the spring 2003 hat collection. After 'North', which was for autumn 2002, why not 'South'? Tiki, Maori, Aztec Bali-Hi... Palm fronds, tom-toms, parakeets, surf. As Britney would say 'Oops I've done it again'!



Epilogue





So that's it: My life in a nutshell, or at least the parts I am prepared to discuss! I hope these articles have been enjoyable and I look forward to meeting you again in the future, but for now its adieu from the world of millinery.
xx S