Hats off to Asian Milliners

Yooney Choi

Bringing their Asian sensibilities to the fore, either through the use of fabrics, colour or design inspiration, these four milliners create crowning glories that are turning heads around the world, writes Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop

The Flower Artist: Yooney Choi

Yooney Choi still remembers her first hat, it was yellow to match her kindergarten uniform: “I was a real little fashionista. Wearing hats in Korea is not very common, but my mum loved to match nice hats to my outfits.” As Choi grew older, she continued to wear hats but the difficulty finding a hat to complement her outfits perfectly led to her decision to make her own: “I’ve always thought that like icing on the cake, a hat completes an outfit.” 

The Seoul-based milliner loves unstructured curves and swirls of flowers and petals, and her hats often have a strong botanical feel. But she also brings a Korean sensitivity to her designs for example, looking for inspiration in traditional Korean hat shapes — such as the ‘Gat,’  a cylindrical black hat with a wide brim made of horsehair on a bamboo frame that was worn by men during the Joseon period — and hairstyles, like the extravagant looks of the gisaeng or Korean Geisha. 

Choi also likes to use Korean materials, such as Hanji paper, made from the inner bark of mulberry trees, and incorporates traditional knots and Daenggi (ribbons) to embellish her creations. She has also used some unusual materials such as cold porcelain to create her flowers, rolling out the paste very thinly before cutting out petals and shaping them with her fingers. “Sketching doesn’t work for me because I always end up with something different so my designs always come from the materials,” she says.

The Dreamer: Eun Young Lee

Inspired by elements from East and West, Korean-born Eun Young Lee fuses unconventional materials with exquisite millinery techniques. In a nod to her heritage, the Beijing-based milliner loves to use hanji paper in her creations. 

“To use hanji is a craft in itself (ji-seung), which comes down to rolling up pieces of thick paper to make a thread. These threads can be woven in beautiful patterns. This Korean craft helps me to make my signature hats,” she explains. 

Lee first studied fashion management at the well-known Bunka Fashion Graduate University in Tokyo, before working for several years in Shanghai for a large Japanese fashion retailer. In 2015, a short millinery course in London during a summer break changed her direction.  

“The experience of making a hat, from design to final product, made me decide to live a new dream and start a professional millinery course at the Kensington and Chelsea College,” she recalls, adding that, “making a hat is a process without limit. Whatever I imagine, I can transform into a hat, and I simply love working without limits.”

For each collection, the designer chooses a theme to “structure” her imagination. “Every hat starts with an idea taken from an experience, a feeling or an image. I make sketches and usually start to experiment with materials to see which one fits the design best. Then the design changes into a product.”

Lee believes her multi-cultural experiences infuse her creations, giving her hats their unique character: “and that is something I am very proud of.”

The Feather Lover: Awon Golding

“A great hat should lift your spirits and make you feel like a million bucks,” says milliner Awon Golding. It’s a statement Lady Gaga can relate to as a few years back, the popstar posted on social media that Golding’s Viola boater made her “feel like Isabella Blow,” the famous English magazine editor and late muse of hat designer Philip Treacy. A modern twist on a classic boater shape, the royal purple velour felt Viola hat has a veil studded with candy pink crystals adding a touch of whimsy. 

Golding’s twist on a stylish shape has helped her attract a very diverse clientele including royalty. On Christmas Day 2018, the Duchess of Sussex wore one of Golding’s Vika hats, a wool felt pillbox with crinoline bow and two striking goose feathers.

“I would describe my hats as modern, fresh and a bit of fun, but lots of my clients say that my hats put a smile on their faces, so I’m happy to go with that,” says the designer.

When choosing materials to work with versatility is key, the milliner says, admitting to a particular weakness for feathers: “There’s huge variety and you can do so many things with them. They can look like sumptuous ice cream cones or fireworks.”

While her hats are handmade in an atelier in East London Golding draws on her multi-cultural background. Born in Hong Kong and of Anglo-Indian heritage, Golding embraces colour. “I love to mix and match punchy tones. Perhaps this is my Indian heritage coming through. English millinery is more typically pastel and quite subdued. Hong Kong doesn’t have a strong hat making or wearing tradition so when I did wear hats as a teen, mainly men’s hats like trilbies and flat caps, I got noticed for it. I must have subconsciously absorbed this attention and now love to turn heads with my millinery,” she says.

 The Sustainable Milliner: Chee Sau Fen

The self-taught Singaporean milliner launched Heads of State Millinery in 2011 aiming to help revive some traditional Asian crafts, while at the same time, helping with the sustainable development of marginalized communities. After talking to various communities in the region about how indigenous textiles and crafts were made, she soon realized “that in order to preserve these traditions, we need to evolve them” thus she has used some innovative techniques to apply these crafts to hat making.

Most designs use abaca fabrics, made on handlooms by communities on Mindanao Island in the Philippines. “This fabric was not traditionally used to make hats so I developed a number of new techniques to create millinery from it. This includes using Japanese washi paper twine bands to make the boning that gives our Kyu-Beautiful Bow collection their sharp yet flexible structures,” Chee says, adding that in the resulting designs, one can appreciate the beauty and utility of the abaca fabrics as well as the washi paper in new ways. “We have also started to work with recycled aluminium. For our latest designs in the “AirLoom” hat collection, we’re weaving biodegradable 3D printing filaments (made of PCL or Polycaprolactone),” she says, explaining she uses a 3D printing pen, instead of a 3D printer machine, which allows her to draw freehand with the filaments to create three dimensional forms. “The way I "draw" is to follow the weave patterns inspired by traditional handwoven baskets - this stabilises the printed structures of the hats,” she explains, adding the filaments are then combined with hand-felted wool fibres. 

“There is a special kind of magic when unassuming raw materials gets combined with imaginative and skilled human hands. There is sense of ease, humility and harmony. I call this ‘Nature Nurtured’ and I always aim to imbue our designs with the same spirit. There will always be a trace of the raw beauty of natural materials or indigenous craft techniques, or both, in our designs,” she adds.