About Philip Treacy: Philip Treacy is an Irish hat designer and designer based in London.
There is no attitude required. The hat brings the attitude. And when people try on a hat they like, it is a bit of fun. It makes them laugh. You don't laugh when you put on a pair of shoes, but you do with a hat.
There's a technicality to designing and wearing hats. A hat is balancing the proportions of your face; it's like architecture or mathematics.
In Rome, I particularly love the history, churches, sculptures and architecture and the fact that you can walk along a tiny cobbled street and turn the corner to find the Trevi Fountain. London is evocative of other eras and full of history.
I believe in originality, primarily. However, it's important to know what there has been before to aim in that direction. Art history informs us. It informs our mind. I like to look at books, exhibitions, paintings, as a computer, subconsciously taki...
Hats are attached to special moments in people's lives - weddings, or the races. In difficult times, people still get married; they still want to look their best.
Try on 100 different hats if you can, until you find the one that suits you best. It's a trial and error thing.
I empathise with the fact that people want to look their best. A hat is all about how it makes you feel - it's so much better than a nip and tuck, and a lot less painful.
I used to make clothes for my sister's dolls. I couldn't care less for the dolls, but I could make the clothes really easily.
The personality of the wearer and the hat makes the hat.
My mother had a sewing machine. I was never allowed to use it, but I was so fascinated by this little needle going up and down joining fabric together that I'd use it when my mother went out to feed the chickens.
The only person I never made a hat for was my mother because my mother didn't really - she preferred to make her own hats. I mean, she was intrigued by everything, but she didn't want one of my hats. She made her own.
A person carries off the hat. Hats are about emotion. It is all about how it makes you feel.
Hats are radical; only people that wear hats understand that.
Everybody loves things that sparkle.
People are dressing like stars, which is kind of fantastic.
Elegance is all in the mind of the wearer.
Somebody can feel elegant without being elegant. It's a personality.
When people think of hats, they think of her majesty the queen.
Fantasy hats give you the possibility to dream.
People, when they buy a hat, they can't explain why they want to buy it or why they want it, but they do. It's like chocolate.
