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Interview by Andrew Gallimore
I met London’s hippest and edgiest milliner Noel Stewart at his Hoxton flat, frantically trying to find visual references for me, send a press package and get to his friend’s house for a dinner appointment in less than 30 minutes. “We’ll have to do the interview on the bus,” says Stewart, throwing a black and white scarf round his neck. Upstairs on a packed number 76 I commence the interview. After a moment of technical difficulty I exchange the batteries from Noel’s Walkman into my dictaphone and the interview begins…
Noel Stewart: I don’t think it’s going round!
ANDREW GALLIMORE: SO MR NOEL STEWART, ERM, HOW DID YOU FIRST GET INTO MILLINERY?
NS: Someone asked me to make them a hat and I had been making lampshades and stuff on my BA, which was sort of in ‘decorative arts’ type thing. They asked if I would make them a hat for a 21st birthday party, which was all hats and head dresses [themed] and I did and it was very successful. Lots of people made comments on it and from then on someone asked me if I would have an exhibition in their restaurant and it all sort of spiralled from there really. Then I left college and thought that I’d better get some proper education and experience, so I went and worked for Dai Rees.
AG: WAS IT A DIFFICULT TRANSITION TO GO FROM MAKING LAMPSHADES TO HATS?
NS: The only thing that was a jump was that suddenly I had to put things into a fashion context, as opposed to [the things I was making] being just objects. They had to relate to the body. I’d made work before that was body related but it wasn’t something that I had concentrated wholly on.
AG: LET ME JUST CHECK THIS IS GOING ROUND. ERM, WHAT’S INSPIRING YOU AT THE MOMENT?
NS: Nature seems to be a running theme that keeps on going on and on and on. And also just people on the street really, what people wear.
AG: DO YOU THINK AT THE MOMENT WITH JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE ALWAYS WEARING A HAT AND MARY J BLIGE LIVING IN A HAT, DO YOU THINK THAT’S HAVING AN EFFECT ON EVERYDAY PEOPLE ON THE STREET WEARING HATS MORE REGULARLY?
NS: It’s still one section of society. Not everyone is wearing a hat; it’s just those who listen to that kind of music. That’s a huge change to what it used to be, like when I started it used to be that people wore hats at just weddings, hardly any casual hats at all.
AG: DO YOU THINK THERE HAD BEEN A GENERAL LACK OF RESPECT OR NECESSITY FOR HATS? I REMEMBER MY GRANDAD NEVER LEFT THE HOUSE WITHOUT A HAT ON, WHATEVER THE OCCASION.
NS: I think that generation just had a whole hat wearing experience. I think there’s been a huge gap partly caused by the 60s, which sort of started with the war… it was a money thing as well. Hats went down to virtually nothing compared to the turn of the century when they were huge and had everything you could possibly imagine on them. Then the war came along and they became very small, sort of little things made out of scraps of fabric found in your cupboard or whatever. Then the 60s kind of killed it because it was all free love and you weren’t supposed to wear any clothes at all. So our generation don’t or didn’t consider ever wearing hats.
AG: WHAT DO YOU THINK PEOPLE WILL BE WEARING ON THEIR HEADS IN TEN YEAR’S TIME?
NS: I think maybe it will be a move towards a sort of more cybernetic type thing with body extensions; well that’s what I’d like to see. More body extension type stuff so that you’ve got implants and cyborg type things with a technological function and visual things as well.
AG: DO YOU SEE A CORRELATION BETWEEN MAKE-UP AND MILLINERY, IN THE FACT THAT THEY BOTH DECORATE THE HEAD?
NS: For me make-up and millinery have similarities in that they are adorning, highlighting and emphasising and sort of extending personality and physicality, erm what was the question?
AG: DO YOU SEE A SIMILARITY IN MILLINERY AND MAKE-UP BEING AS THEY ARE BOTH WAYS OF DECORATING A HEAD.
NS: Exactly that, that they are extensions of personality and physicality. The similar strengths being that they are all head based, which is the most powerful place to accessorise. Most visual impact comes from the head, so that’s make-up, that’s hair and that’s hats.
AG: LIKE THAT ANSWER! DO YOU FIND THAT IT IS A COMPETITIVE BUSINESS? COZ I KINDA THINK I KNOW LOADS OF FASHION DESIGNERS, HAIR STYLISTS , MAKE-UP ARTISTS AND I KNOW ONE MILLINER.
NS: I know loads of milliners!
AG: WELL YOU WOULD! WEREN’T YOU ONE OF TWO PEOPLE DOING THE COURSE OR SOMETHING?
NS: There’s one a year. There’s not a demand like there used to be. It’s competitive, not necessarily because there are lots of milliners competing but the milliners that are competing are competing for a very small forum. Not every designer is using hats so any who are using hats are very hard to get hold of.
AG: DO YOU THINK THAT AFFECTS YOUR FREEDOM FOR INSPIRATION? BECAUSE THERE AREN’T AS MANY PEOPLE DOING IT, ISN’T THERE LESS CHANCE THAT IT HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE?
NS: No. For some reason I feel more restricted.
AG: WHO DO YOU THINK IS THE BEST HAT WEARER? AND WHO WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO SEE WEARING ONE OF YOURS?
NS: I should have a clever answer for this question! I’d like to see Bjork wearing a hat, very much! I don’t know who the best hat wearer is. Just people on the street seem to wear them well. There isn’t such a thing as the best hat wearer, it’s like who’s the best make-up wearer?
AG: MARILYN MANSON, OF COURSE!
NS: Oh yes, off course! I like Alicia Keys actually. I think she wears a hat well.
AG: HOW DID YOU MEET STEPHEN JONES?
NS: That’s a very long and drawn out story! I’d left Dai’s, I’d applied to Philip Treacy and not got the job and I was working doing waiting and somehow I got a little job being the on-screen stylist for ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ and I’d sent all my stuff to Stephen and hadn’t had a response. I had to style this girl in Stephen’s shop for her wedding ‘going away’ outfit. While I was in there I got chatting to the shop girl and said: “I applied for a job here,” and she said, “Really? Well you should apply again and keep on pushing and if you send it [your CV] this week I’ll make sure it gets out to the top of the pile for when he comes back.”
I got called in for an interview, not with Stephen but with the head of the work room, Stephen’s second-in-command. They originally wanted me to work in the shop, then that wasn’t going to happen because they took one look at me and realised there was no question of it. Stephen was very open and honest, because I wasn’t properly trained, but he was pleasantly surprised by my ability to pick up skills and that I just really wanted to do it.
AG: YOU’VE JUST FINISHED MAKING A FILM TO SHOWCASE YOUR LATEST COLLECTION. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO MAKE A FILM?
NS: I’d started looking at what I was going to do this season; I’d seen somebody else’s show and got quite angry at how people can just throw together a show and not actually have any talent. I thought well, that’s just fucking ridiculous, I’ve got a lot more talent, a lot more experience, I’ve just finished my MA and just thought I’m gonna do it. I was fed up with wasting time. So I started looking at doing a catwalk show and then thought actually, everyone does a catwalk show, there must be a more interesting way of doing it.
The girl who was helping me is a film producer and she said, “Why don’t you make a film?” and I thought actually that would be really good. I’d worked on other peoples short films as art director, just as things to do while I was doing my degree and while I was working on other stuff. So I thought it was a really good idea and I could communicate a much clearer message and a lot more of an interesting complex message through film than you can with catwalk. Catwalk is just belting clothes on or hats on, on a stage. Film’s sort of like a performance but you’ve got more control over how the performance is presented and you can set a mood much more, there’s a lot more depth basically, sort of semantically. Something like that anyway.
AG: HOW DID YOU GATHER YOUR TEAM TOGETHER TO MAKE IT?
NS: Friends, slaves, anyone I could grab! Mainly friends really. It’s surprising how many people wanted to get involved. Or friends of friends who had experience. Just by asking around.
AG: (MOUTHING TO NS) NOW SAY, ‘I LOVE HATS!’
NS: No! I’m not saying it to camera!
AG: NOEL LOVES HATS! WELL I’VE TICKED ALL THE QUESTIONS ON MY LIST. THANK YOU. I THINK THIS IS MY STOP.