In conversation with Mr Stephen Jones

Lo straordinario designer di cappelli britannico condivide alcuni dettagli sulla collezione primavera/estate 2017

by Peppe Orrù

 

 

I have always been fascinated by your incredible ability to made the most extraordinary flights of fancy become reality. Would you mind telling us about your creative process and about the Spring/Summer 2017 women’s collection?

Well, I have to pluck a theme from somewhere as an inspiration: sometimes it’s a long development, but sometimes it’s a ‘Eureka!’ moment that come to me in a second.

For ‘Shade’, my Spring/Summer 2017 collection, I was interested in studying shadows and how shadows make people look. This idea of shade took a lot of development and of research into the mathematics of light. I wanted to give the collection a more fashion feeling though and in my research I came across those Cecil Beaton images from the 1940’s when he was taking photographs for the War Office in North Africa and the extreme chiaroscuro shadows seen in his black and white photographs.

 

Have you used any brand new materials, techniques, decorative details?

Every season milliners use new techniques and this season is no exception. For this collection it was often using a light and dark version of the same fabric, either by dying or placement. The materials themselves are still classic: it was what I did with them that is very unusual.

Was the collection designed with a specific woman/women in mind?

For my ‘Model Millinery’ collection, it was somebody who really appreciated a refined artistic aesthetics. For my ‘Miss Jones’ collection, a broad range of women and the many different occasions around the world for which they would be wearing a hat, including going to the races, going to a wedding, going to the beach.

 

You have always collaborated with the most talented fashion designers in the world. Would you like to share some details about the Spring/Summer 2017 collaborations?

Fashion is so often about the new. Therefore this season I collaborated with young designer Ryan Lo and made some effervescent and flamboyant party bicorne hats in glittery braid, which looked spectacular on the runway: I can’t imagine any boy or girl wanting to wear anything else to a party! In Paris I was honoured to be able to collaborate with Maria Grazia Chiuri for her first season at Christian Dior: she loved the fact that the silhouette of the hats evoked the silhouette of a Dior ‘New Look’ skirt.

 

You have recently published a wonderful new book in collaboration with Rizzoli. Any new plans for the immediate future?

The book is really a biography written by Susannah Frankel and it charts my life from growing up as a little boy in Liverpool in the North of England wanting to be an astronaut to having retrospective exhibitions around the world and being the millinery designer at Christian Dior for 20 years. There are new exhibitions coming along in the future – 2018 will be the year of exhibitions! – and a new fragrance created in collaboration with Comme des Garçons. Every season is a new plan, every season is another lifetime.

 

www.stephenjonesmillinery.com/