Mad Hatters

One of the most exciting developments in women's fashion in recent years has been the return of the eccentric, yet stylish hat. Not since the 1940s have hats been as imaginative, colourful or as witty as we see them today. Mad Hatters is a small exhibition exploring the work of two influential British milliners, Stephen Jones and Kirsten Woodward. Both designers represent the vanguard in the contemporary revival of the art of millinery.

The phrase 'Mad as a Hatter' has been common in the English language ever since Lewis Carroll wrote of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in his famous children's tale, Alice in Wonderland, published in 1865. Carroll was referring to the recently identified Industrial Disease, which was characterised by symptoms of acute nervousness and irritability and caused by inhaling the fumes of mercuric nitrate, a mixture used in the felting of animal furs for hat-making. Over time, the seemingly odd behaviour of workers in the felting trades became associated with the millinery profession as a whole.

The notion of the stylishly quirky hat, the 'mad' hat, became popular in the middle of the 1930s and lasted until the end of the Second World War. In fact, the title of Stephen Jones's Something 40s hat 1989 makes a direct reference to this period when the rather sober and often masculine fashions of the day could only be relieved by hats which, in contrast, were often individualised, frivolous and always entertaining. Accessories and, most of all, hats became the best means of expressing fashion change to the point that, on the eve of war, crazy, nonsense hats were front page news.

The Surrealist-inspired hats designed by the Paris couturier Elsa Schiaparelli were the most influential of the period. Her designs, including the Mutton chop, Ink pot and Hen in Nest hats from 1937 and 1938 were talking points in fashionable society. One of Schiaparelli's first successes was her knitted Madcap which was copied worldwide, while her Shoe hat of 1937 has become one of the most memorable hats of this century.

The more recent revival of the hat as a fashionable accessory has only really occurred in the last decade – a trend attributed in part to the immense popularity of tailored clothes. Hats have become, once again, a popular means of adding a touch of stylish frivolity to an otherwise standard dress code. However, the legacy of the 30s and 40s are not the only explanation for the flamboyant style of many of the works in this exhibition. They are, to some degree, the expression of fashion as a form of spectacle and entertainment, a sensibility which has its roots in the so-called 'Blitz' or 'New Romantic' culture which managed to combine the iconoclasm of Punk with the glamour of the theatre. Like Punk, the Blitz phenomenon which originated around 1980 in a London night club of the some name, was to exert a strong influence on fashion throughout the decade. Within this context, the inventive, allusive and seemingly eccentric hats by both Kirsten Woodward and Stephen Jones are particularly outstanding. Jones's Deep vibes hat 1985 inspired by the magic of Venice, and Woodward's gravity-defying Vase hat 1989, which alludes to classical art, seem clearly related to the more romantic side of Blitz culture. While Stephen Jones and Kirsten Woodward share none of the symptoms of their professional ancestors’ disease, they are ‘mad’ in the sense that they have instrumental in reviving the art of the quirky hat.

Kirsten Woodward’s hats reflect her personality – flamboyant, amusing and very clever. Described as a hat designer who thinks in forms of a whole collection, as opposed to a milliner who concentrates all of his or her efforts on each individual hat. Woodward produces two seasonal ranges a year. Woodward studied at the London College of Fashion under a tutor who was herself hatmaker to Dior for fourteen years.

In 1983, after graduating, Woodward was one of the many original young talents to establish herself with a stall at London’s famous Hyper Hyper store. It was here a year later that the influential Parisian designer, Karl Lagerfeld spotted Woodward’s talent for draping fabric. Two examples of this are the Organza Rose and Shell hates 1989. Within a week of Lagerfeld’s visit, Woodward was in Paris working on her range of brilliantly funny ‘French patisserie’ hats devised to accessorise Lagerfeld’s own signature collection. It was through this collaboration that Woodward first came to international attention. Further commissions from European fashion houses including Chanel, where she made profiteroles out of straw, then kept her work in the public eye. Subsequent commissions from Lagerfeld saw Woodward producing hats in the shape of cream cakes, chairs and picture frames.

Kirsten Woodward is particularly noted for her ability to translate surreal ideas into workable designs. Her typically tongue-in-cheek creations often follow a specific theme inspired by a wide range of sources including films, exhibitions and art history. In this exhibition two hats and designs have been inspired by film, Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic ‘The Last Emperor’, and the muscles torso of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s in ‘Conan the Barbarian’. Woodward’s Pagoda hat 1989 takes its striking tiered shape from classical Chinese temples, while her Torso hat 1989, constructed from finely woven straw and brilliantly shaped and decorated by hand, is a virtuoso example of the milliner’s art. Based in London, but feeling more in tune with Paris, Woodward now works mainly on her own collections and private commissions.

Stephen Jones’s hats have been described as witty and outrageous, with a generous fantasy and an imaginative use of materials combined to create dazzlingly original designs. In his first year of studying fashion design at St. Martin’s School of Art, London, Jones was apprenticed to couture milliner and soon after began concentrating on designing hats.

After graduating in 1979, Jones travelled to Paris seeking inspiration and work before returning to London to establish his own business. Although, initially Jones catered to a more traditional clientele, it was perhaps the hats he made for his more flamboyant friends and acquaintances from the pop music industry, people such as Boy George, Steve Strange and Grace Jones, which earned Jones a reputation as an unconventional milliner.

By 1981, Jones’s hats were gaining a certain cult status and attention of avant-garde French designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier, who invited the English milliner to create the hats for his own collection after admiring a fez which Jones designed and wore in the video for the Culture Club's hit song ‘Do you really want to hurt me'. Within a short time, Jones was receiving regular commissions from some of the most innovative designers in Paris, London and Tokyo including Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana and Rei Kawakubo.

Today, Stephen Jones concentrates on producing hats for his own seasonal collections as well as accessorising the catwalk show for a small number of designers.

One of Stephen Jones's distinctive talents as a designer is his ability to create hats which frequently appear to be in defiance of physical law. As Jones himself said, ‘There is a strong element of trickery involved. We use lots of different things inside the actual hat and the covering fabric is in a way, immaterial to the final structure of the hat.' The Aurora hat 1985 is a good example, with its allusions to both classical architecture and the ethereal lights of the Aurora Borealis, pleated and painted satin are magically twisted around and over the face barely resting on the wearer's head. Asymmetry characterises much of Jones’s work, often in quite a subtle manner, as in the Central Park West 1986, Tortellini 1985 and Escudos hats 1986. Although at times quite simple in effect, Jones’s finest hats are masterpieces in design and execution, as in the dramatically shaped and stitched Quintesse hat 1989.

Over the past ten years, the fashion cycle has returned us to those crazy hats of the past when designers like Elsa Schiaparelli created style out of fantasy. Though Stephen Jones and Kirsten Woodward's hats are worn only by the brave and seriously stylish, their work is acknowledged around the globe for its madcap originality. Like Schiaparelli, Kirsten Woodward and Stephen Jones have become leaders in the world of fashion.

• Australian National Gallery, ACT
  29 Aug — 6 Dec 1992

1993

• Mildura Arts Centre, VIC
  1 Feb — 28 Feb 1993
• City of Hamilton Art Gallery, VIC
  16 Mar — 2 May 1993
• Geelong Art Gallery, VIC
  15 May — 20 Jun 1993
• Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania, TAS
  13 Aug — 5 Sep 1993
• Devonport Gallery and Arts Centre, TAS
  4 Jul — 8 Aug 1993
• Warrnambool Art Gallery, VIC
  14 Sep — 10 Oct 1993
• Gallery on Two, 310 Bourke Street, David Jones Melbourne, VIC
  20 Oct — 1 1 Nov 1993