Paragon

Sarah O’ Rourke

Ireland

• HATalk Issue 171: Millinery Masters – Bes-Ben: The Millinery Art of Benjamin B. Green-Field
• HATalk Issue 174: Millinery Masters – Bill Cunningham the Hat Maker

What struck me from these articles was Benjamin embracing non-traditional materials and William’s daring and imaginative designs with both designers creations described as surreal.

I myself hand-make all my own fabric in house and do not use traditional millinery materials or techniques so I quickly found a bond with Benjamin embracing non-traditional materials.

William’s pieces are described as ‘not for the wearer that wanted to look like everyone else’ which us how I see my own designs as they aren’t typical millinery. I took inspiration from his use of animals. I liked how the octopus design wrapped around the head and the description of the scales of a fish hat were very detailed and eye catching.

I took inspiration from Ben's love of brocade jackets and began looking at the patterns and intricate detailing of brocade and toyed with the idea of creating a brocade piece. The more I looked at the designs I saw the repetition of feathers. This inspired me to use a bird and I wanted it to be dramatic which led me to create a phoenix in bold, bright colours and intricate detailing of the feathers.

The hand embroidery stemmed from the brocade idea I like how the detail is captured and decided to hand embroider the phoenix as a focus piece which is something I have never done before so I was quite nervous. This was outlined with black embroidery thread to make it pop and has taken approximately 200 hours to embroider. I referred back to William’s love of feathers and combined them with the embroidered tail of the phoenix to give it a whimsical and magical look.

• Cream voile (what the bird was embroidered onto)
• DMC embroidery threads in blue, purple, yellow, orange, pink, black and white
• The base is made using my handmade fabric in blue tones from blue fibers
• Hat brim to keep the base shape
• Emu feathers in blue, purple, yellow, pinks, white, black
• A 14 tooth comb with blue satin ribbon
• Invisible thread
• Wooden label with logo

• The phoenix design was drawn onto a piece of voile and then hand embroidered using long and short stitching technique. Then was outlined in black embroidery thread with a backstitch. It was cut from the voile and handstitched to the hat base.
•  The base was created from a sheet of my handmade fabric, it was shaped and stiffened and the outside lined with millinery wire and the comb sewn into place
• Emu feathers were individually glued to the hat base with alternating colours before the embroidery was attached.
• The embroidery piece was hand sewn into place