Millinery Design and Production: Gloriole
Aug. 9th, 2011 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labricoleuseFor the Stephen Jones millinery competition, I decided to take a broad approach in coming up with my entry. Rather than making just one hat, I had (as usual) way more ideas than just a single style, so I decided to start cranking them out, with the idea that when I finished the one I wanted to enter, I'd know.
The contest allows entrants to submit either an image of a completed hat or a design rendering of "a hat that you can make within a week." I know from experience that, for me, concept is one thing and actualization is another thing entirely. I have made a lot of hats working from the design renderings of others in the theatre; since I didn't have much time to do this, I decided to start from materials and work sculpturally, rather than start from a concept drawing and then have to worry about the developmental stage where you need to then figure out, "What material is going to be necessary to take this idea and make it a real wearable hat?"
The first hat I made was a freely-draped turban style I decided to call Gloriole.
Gloriole by Rachel E. Pollock
I started with this style for a number of reasons, the first and foremost being that Jones himself stated in the contest description that he did not want to see fascinator entries, but rather some millinery designs that were "painted with a broad brush." Fascinators are fabulous, and they may just be the crack in the dam that allow the panoply of hat styles to come rushing back into fashion and daily wear and such, but they are also an extremely popular and commonly-seen style. They are a fairly simple millinery design--even the craziest, most elaborate fascinator has two parts: a base, and the adornment.
So, my first hat came from thinking about other kinds of hat styles which could be utilized and reinterpreted. The turban was the first that inspired me. The turban exists in modern Western life as a politicized image, in a lot of ways, but it has a history that is rich, varied, storied, mythic, glamorous, and inspiring! Many different headwrap styles can be found worldwide with both religious and cultural significance, and I wanted to try to create a shape evocative of many different wrapped styles without definitively copying any particular culture's version. I also knew I wanted to use some kind of unexpected material, so I started with the stack of fabrics I have on a shelf in my studio closet...
This turban began its life as an antique feed sack which I inherited in a large textile collection from an aunt who passed away two years ago. She had a great eye for textiles and collected everything from silk to sackcloth to swaths of hand-tatted lace. This coarsely-woven sackcloth fabric is ragged in places, distressed, patinaed, really lovely in an unkempt sort of way. The original piece is probably 20 sq.ft. of surface area. I created the hat sculpturally, pinning the sackcloth organically into shape, directly on the dolly head. Had I decided to enter this one in the contest, I would have finished it to be wearable by transferring it to a pulled buckram foundation cap for stability and control of this free-form style.
I'm a firm believer in the visual interest of the diagonal and the skewed line when it comes to millinery design, so I knew I wanted some kind of large ornament on the piece. The hat is adorned with a 2' spiral piece of something they called sumbawa at the floral shop, and a single silk leaf. The sumbawa feels like bark and looks like leather. I have a dozen more pieces of it so I can imagine doing a whole series of things just incorporating it, it's such a neat material!
So, for about two days, I thought that this would be my entry to the contest, but then I cleaned out a drawer labeled "Sinamay & Etc" and started fiddling with a whole new idea, which I'll post about tomorrow or Thursday!
Friday, the contest opens for voting and I'll write about my actual entry, and we can all page through the DOZENS of amazing entries, too! That is admittedly maybe my favorite thing about participating in this contest so far, connecting with milliners all over the globe and seeing their work. The competition is FIERCE, as they say!
The contest allows entrants to submit either an image of a completed hat or a design rendering of "a hat that you can make within a week." I know from experience that, for me, concept is one thing and actualization is another thing entirely. I have made a lot of hats working from the design renderings of others in the theatre; since I didn't have much time to do this, I decided to start from materials and work sculpturally, rather than start from a concept drawing and then have to worry about the developmental stage where you need to then figure out, "What material is going to be necessary to take this idea and make it a real wearable hat?"
The first hat I made was a freely-draped turban style I decided to call Gloriole.
Gloriole by Rachel E. Pollock
I started with this style for a number of reasons, the first and foremost being that Jones himself stated in the contest description that he did not want to see fascinator entries, but rather some millinery designs that were "painted with a broad brush." Fascinators are fabulous, and they may just be the crack in the dam that allow the panoply of hat styles to come rushing back into fashion and daily wear and such, but they are also an extremely popular and commonly-seen style. They are a fairly simple millinery design--even the craziest, most elaborate fascinator has two parts: a base, and the adornment.
So, my first hat came from thinking about other kinds of hat styles which could be utilized and reinterpreted. The turban was the first that inspired me. The turban exists in modern Western life as a politicized image, in a lot of ways, but it has a history that is rich, varied, storied, mythic, glamorous, and inspiring! Many different headwrap styles can be found worldwide with both religious and cultural significance, and I wanted to try to create a shape evocative of many different wrapped styles without definitively copying any particular culture's version. I also knew I wanted to use some kind of unexpected material, so I started with the stack of fabrics I have on a shelf in my studio closet...
This turban began its life as an antique feed sack which I inherited in a large textile collection from an aunt who passed away two years ago. She had a great eye for textiles and collected everything from silk to sackcloth to swaths of hand-tatted lace. This coarsely-woven sackcloth fabric is ragged in places, distressed, patinaed, really lovely in an unkempt sort of way. The original piece is probably 20 sq.ft. of surface area. I created the hat sculpturally, pinning the sackcloth organically into shape, directly on the dolly head. Had I decided to enter this one in the contest, I would have finished it to be wearable by transferring it to a pulled buckram foundation cap for stability and control of this free-form style.
I'm a firm believer in the visual interest of the diagonal and the skewed line when it comes to millinery design, so I knew I wanted some kind of large ornament on the piece. The hat is adorned with a 2' spiral piece of something they called sumbawa at the floral shop, and a single silk leaf. The sumbawa feels like bark and looks like leather. I have a dozen more pieces of it so I can imagine doing a whole series of things just incorporating it, it's such a neat material!
So, for about two days, I thought that this would be my entry to the contest, but then I cleaned out a drawer labeled "Sinamay & Etc" and started fiddling with a whole new idea, which I'll post about tomorrow or Thursday!
Friday, the contest opens for voting and I'll write about my actual entry, and we can all page through the DOZENS of amazing entries, too! That is admittedly maybe my favorite thing about participating in this contest so far, connecting with milliners all over the globe and seeing their work. The competition is FIERCE, as they say!
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-09 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-09 11:38 pm (UTC)And, good question, depends on the style. I usually plan to just redrape onto a base, but I've also been in situations where i pinned the whole thing together as a unit and moved it draped onto a base. This one, if i'd gone with it, i'd have just redraped it.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 12:33 pm (UTC)(Sorry for the delayed comment--meant to say something earlier but got distracted and the second hat reminded me I wanted to comment.)