Hat trick

Milliner Stephen Jones has worked with the biggest names in fashion and music—and with style’s current maximalist moment, he’s never been more in demand.

- By Véronique Hyland

The first hats Stephen Jones made were destined for the dance floor.

“They could only be so big,” the designer—who today is wearing a simple navy beret—recalls, framing his face with his hands. “They could be vertical, but they couldn't be too wide, because how the hell do you dance in a big hat?”

As a “Blitz Kid,” enmeshed in London's New Romantics scene, Jones was a flower growing between the cracks of Britain's early-1980s austerity sidewalk. The retro, romantic theatricality of his designs, which he created for his club-habitué friends, could only have emerged out of tough times. “Things in the ’60s and ’70s had all been subconsciously about moving forward,” he remembers. “And we thought, ‘Well, maybe moving forward is moving back.’” His towering-but-narrow creations soon caught the eye, and adorned the head, of his then-neighbor Boy George.