Philip Treacy, Stephen Jones, Misa Harada, Noel Stewart, Ian Bennett… These are just a few of the illustrious hat designers who were influenced and molded by the highly skilled and perfectly manicured hands of the milliner Shirley Hex, who died last month at the age of 91.
A master of her craft but one of the unsung heroes of fashion, Hex was a teacher at Middlesex University, Harrow University, Surrey Institute of Art & Design, and the Royal College of Art in London, where she encouraged her students to work hard, honing the complex technical skills of millinery design, while finding their own unique voices.
Shirley “was from an era when hats were everyday,” Treacy tells Vogue. “Her technical ability and knowledge was unsurpassed, [and] she was particularly special, because how she conveyed her knowledge was everything. She was a born teacher and she inspired us, all of us.” He went on to say; “Hats are something that you really have to love to do, because it is an intrinsically and incredibly complex time-consuming craft. It has the illusion of dreaminess and effortlessness, but a huge amount of effort goes into it.”
Stephen Jones concurred. “Seeing Shirley making a hat was so second nature. She would do the most difficult things and make it look easy. It’s like a ballet dancer, making the dance look very natural, but her feet might be bleeding. Shirley made it look easy, so she inspired confidence in us—because sometimes we couldn’t do it, but we knew one day we could. That was extraordinary!”
Shirley Hex, known to her family as Lee Lee, was born in 1933 in London, the second daughter to Bob and Ethel Hex. She started her millinery career at age 15 interning at various shops around London. In the 1950s she honed her skills working at Madame Vernier and Edward Mann. “She started making hats because her mother loved hats,” Treacy explained. “Over a 30-year period, she worked with the best, at a very diverse range of hat makers, commercial, couture, and ready-to-wear.”
In 1976 Hex became the head of the millinery department for the British couture house Lachasse. The brand’s owner Peter Lewis-Crown invited Stephen Jones to be an intern, but Hex insisted on seeing his work first. Jones remembered, “I had the weekend to make a hat to show Shirley on Monday. I did it by using my sister’s blouse, a cornflakes packet and a plastic rose painted silver, and I passed. I didn’t realize that flowers for hats were supposed to be made from silk. She thought the plastic one was very punk and contemporary.”
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