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Wearing a hat is fun; people have a good time when they're wearing a hat.
Philip Treacy
When you meet someone, you meet their face. It's the most potent part of the body to embellish.
I was just, as a child, very different from the others, and didn't really care what they thought because you know, a child doesn't really have inhibitions; you sort of gain your inhibitions later.
The personality of the wearer and the hat makes the hat.
Certainly, people like Gaga have introduced a new type of hat-wearing.
Elegance is all in the mind of the wearer.
So my advice is to always choose something simpler - an expressive outfit, plus a hat, can be frightening.
Try on 100 different hats if you can, until you find the one that suits you best. It's a trial and error thing.
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.
America brought us the baseball cap; it's one of my favorite hats.
Somebody can feel elegant without being elegant. It's a personality.
Fantasy hats give you the possibility to dream.
I believe that I am a hat designer, not a milliner.
A person carries off the hat. Hats are about emotion. It is all about how it makes you feel.
How a hat makes you feel is what a hat is all about.
I believe in a democratic approach to fashion: if you feel good, then great. You may not look good, but it's not the problem.
The classic hat image was during the Forties and Fifties, and Elizabeth Taylor was the epitome of that; she was the ultimate celebrity of excess and glamour, and she worked major sun hats.
I remember in the early nineties people saying the hat was just for old women, but that's ridiculous.
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.
You always see a better side of where you're visiting when a local shows you around.
Hats are for life's ultimate moments. They're worn at races, at weddings. Occasions many of us, who aren't royals and celebrities, only attend once or twice in a lifetime.
There's a technicality to designing and wearing hats. A hat is balancing the proportions of your face; it's like architecture or mathematics.
Hats are the epitome of Englishness, and a royal wedding is the penultimate moment for a hat designer. I'm Irish, but I am a royalist and I believe in fantasy.
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.
Hats are radical; only people that wear hats understand that.
Hats are really for ultimate occasions, so when I make one, I try to do something different, something noticeable.
Gaga is an entertainer, so a hat for her is part of the illusion of entertaining.
The success of a hat definitely lies with balancing the personality of the wearer with the type of occasion. Don't listen to those rules about face shape.
Every day, I like to make hats that make people dream.
I must point out - Sarah Jessica Parker is not a diva - she's one of these pop culture characters that everybody likes.
When people come and visit me and have a hat made, it's a little bit like visiting a psychiatrist, but they don't actually realize that.
Hat-making is laborious and time-consuming. It's a very tactile medium, and you can develop the skills, but it's one of those things: you either have it, or you don't. I love bringing something to fruition with my hands that gives people pleasure.
I do say I'm a specialist in divas. Name a diva - I've worked with 'em.
At home, I had seven brothers, one sister. I sewed clothes for my sister's dolls although she was grown and gone away. I was a weirdo but didn't think I was a weirdo.
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.
I always design the hat with the wearer in mind; otherwise, it's an inanimate object.
Not long ago, a hat was a conformist accessory. Then the 1960s came along, and young people didn't want to wear hats.
My aim is to change people's perceptions of what a hat can look like in the 21st century.
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.
Women come into our shop for that ultimate moment in their life. They're buying a dream. They're buying a moment for themselves. That's what I sell - moments.
I particularly like to travel for work because you see a completely different side of the country you're visiting.
I'm representative of 21st century Irish design, so I promote Irishness all over the world wherever I go.
I grew up in a little village in the west of Ireland.
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 taking on information.
I like hats that make the heart beat faster.
When you're wearing something on your head, you feel beautiful.
I make hats for lots of iconic people, and that makes my job very interesting.
I grew up in the west of Ireland, and Galway was our local seaside resort. We'd go for one day of the year during the summer, and I have enduring memories of the sand and the sea.
Often, what makes my job so exciting is designing for the mother whose dream has been to wear one of my hats at her child's wedding. I feel as responsible for making her feel like a million dollars as I do for somebody in the public eye.
Fashion is an illusion. It's a multibillion-pound industry that has to appear frivolous. Designers work and work and work, all night sometimes.