Paris Exhibition Highlights Hatmaker Stephen Jones’ French Contact

PARIS – Many British designers have discovered fame and fortune in Paris, however none of them have labored for homes as diverse as Dior, Schiaparelli, Jean Paul Gaultier and Comme des Garçons – to call just some.

That extraordinary achievement belongs to milliner Stephen Jones, whose 44-year profession is the topic of a brand new exhibition at Palais Galliera, the French capital’s style museum. 

Opening on Saturday, the present is known as “Stephen Jones, chapeaux d’artiste,” nevertheless it might have been “A Story of Two Cities.”

It’s a deep dive into the non-public historical past of the Liverpool-born inventive who rose to consideration as a part of the Blitz membership scene in London within the late ‘70s and landed in Paris within the early ‘80s, shortly establishing himself because the go-to milliner for the hottest designers of that period.

Since then, he has lived and labored with a foot in every metropolis, defying Brexit with a resolutely Francophile worldview.

“What stunned me was truly the simplicity of the story, which was not so apparent to me, which was so apparent to them: It’s about me in Paris, and Paris in me,” Jones advised WWD after a guided go to in fluent French, sprinkled with the franglais that’s the lingua franca of Brits working in Paris. 

“After I’m in London, I wish to be in Paris. After I’m in Paris, I wish to be in London. It’s the combo of the 2 that’s attention-grabbing as a result of London is a masculine city and Paris is a female city. In style, you want each,” he mentioned.

That includes 170 hats, the present toggles between the Anglo and French influences in his work: a Union Jack bowler hat right here, an Eiffel Tower fascinator fabricated from swirling black ribbons there. 

It additionally showcases some 40 full appears, illustrating his Zelig-like means to mould his designs to the necessities of wildly completely different designers. 

For Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton, he may use dramatic plumes of black peacock feathers, whereas for womenswear designer Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior, he’ll supply wearable variations on the traditional French beret. 

A Claude Montana look may require a hat as graphic as a easy line, whereas a John Galliano design for Maison Margiela can be topped with a cranium hood plastered in rhinestones and paste jewels. 

“Each, for me, is like an entry into a unique world,” he mentioned.

“World of Gaultier is so completely different to World of Dior, which is so completely different to World of Schiaparelli, however nonetheless on the similar time, I take a hat out of a field for a becoming, and my coronary heart remains to be in my mouth: ‘Are they going to love it or not?’ That’s one thing that’s nonetheless there, unchanged, ever since I began working,” he added.

It’s the primary time in 40 years that the museum has devoted an exhibition to hats.

“We actually wished to focus on equipment and the style professions which are maybe much less identified to most of the people than couturiers and designers,” mentioned Marie-Laure Gutton, head of the equipment collections at Palais Galliera and scientific curator of the present.

“Our hat assortment is substantial. Now we have 4,000 items, however we didn’t essentially wish to strategy it from a strictly historic viewpoint. The modern angle was extra compelling for us, and amongst modern hat designers, Stephen was the one with the deepest hyperlinks to Paris style,” she added.

Whereas Jones is probably not a family title, guests will most likely have seen his creations, starting from the mushy berets worn by Princess Diana within the ‘80s to Rihanna’s bishop hat for the 2018 Met Gala. He holds the official title of inventive director of hats at Dior, the place he has labored for nearly three many years.

Whereas Jones loaned many of the designs on show from his private archive, some are juxtaposed with historic items from the museum’s assortment. 

Probably the most extraordinary is a Phrygian cap, also called a liberty bonnet, relationship again to the French Revolution – nonetheless in its authentic field with a pink wax seal. Jones’ tackle the type, which has been again within the information because the mascot for the Paris Olympics, resembles a pink beanie. 

In contrast to his earlier museum reveals, which included “Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones” at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum in 2009, the Galliera present encompasses a trove of artifacts and mementoes, from his father’s rugby caps from the Nineteen Thirties to the invitation to the inaguration of his first retailer in 1980. 

“That is actually private,” Jones mentioned. “All this depth of issues have by no means been represented.”

As a style design pupil at Saint Martin’s Faculty of Artwork in London, Jones frolicked with New Romantic bands together with Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Visage, whose members Steve Unusual and Rusty Egan based the Blitz Membership as an antidote to the gloom of economically depressed England within the late ’70s. 

Membership youngsters would compete to place collectively probably the most glamorous and outlandish appears. That’s how Jones, sporting a fez, ended up within the video for Tradition Membership’s “Do You Actually Wish to Harm Me,” catching Gaultier’s consideration. Their first collaboration in 1984 featured fez hats dripping with coloured fringe. 

Jones stumbled into hat design whereas interning at British couture home Lachasse, the place he met his mentor Shirley Hex.

“After I left school, there have been quite a lot of style designers, however there wasn’t a single milliner. I assumed, if I wish to be a punk, it’s extra punk to be a hat designer, as a result of no person’s enthusiastic about it,” he mentioned. 

The festive show comes with its personal soundtrack, a specifically compiled playlist that may be downloaded with a QR code. “I feel it’s the primary time the Galliera has put up a glitter ball,” mentioned Jones, revealing that he additionally sang in a band referred to as Pink Components. 

Some exhibit labels are designed for youths, and there’s an AI app that enables guests to nearly strive on hats.

“I wished one thing that someone might go round in 5 minutes, or spend two hours going round –  someone who is aware of one thing about style, or someone who is aware of nothing about style in any respect,” Jones defined. “Hats are eye sweet. Everybody can recognize them.”

Vogue aficionados will discover loads to please in. There’s an Elsa Schiaparelli shoe hat that belonged to Gala Dalí, one in every of solely three identified surviving examples of the unique design. 

Jones has created a number of interpretations of the Surrealist idea, together with a stylized model made for Schiaparelli’s present inventive director Daniel Roseberry. 

Then there’s his tweed crown for Vivienne Westwood’s fall 1987 assortment. The 2 had an inauspicious assembly when Jones by chance stepped on her toes when dancing at a nightclub, however he would go on to assist her develop her notorious mini-crini skirt. 

One exhibition case highlights his use of surprising supplies, from a mohawk hat made with Barbie doll legs to a conceptual assemblage of yellowed ebook pages.

Again and again, Jones harks again to the historical past of French high fashion, which has impressed him since his days as a punk at Saint Martins, when he found a field stuffed with previous problems with Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue magazines. 

“I keep in mind wanting by means of them, and there have been all these extraordinary ladies sporting Fath, Dior, Balenciaga,” he recalled.

“All of them had a very sturdy perspective and that perspective, I felt, was actually punk. Who else had an perspective like that? Johnny Rotten. It actually wasn’t the world of nation cashmere. It was about being on level, being opinionated, being geometric,” Jones added. 

“That was an enormous inspiration for me and in addition, I beloved all of the tales of the way it was made, and the approach and the craft,” he mentioned. “It’s that ‘Emily in Paris’ delusion of high fashion, or ‘Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris.’ There’s a lot literature concerning the concept of Paris from overseas. Paris is an emblem of all the things.”