By Maria Puente, USA TODAY
LONDON � For collectors, wearers and designers of hats, this is the town to be in, and this week of the royal wedding is the time to be here, says Louis Mariette, one of London's top milliners of dramatic, flamboyant, over-the-top chapeaux.
By Garrett Hubbard, USA TODAY
"People don't usually come to me for low-key hats": Milliner Louis Mariette in his London studio. Beside him is a creation inspired by Queen Nefertiti of Egypt.
By Garrett Hubbard, USA TODAY
"People don't usually come to me for low-key hats": Milliner Louis Mariette in his London studio. Beside him is a creation inspired by Queen Nefertiti of Egypt.
Hats are required for numerous social occasions in Britain, but there's no better time to show off one's headgear than a royal wedding like the one Friday, when Catherine "Kate" Middleton will marry Prince William of Wales at Westminster Abbey before 1,900 invited guests.
Count on it: Every woman there will be wearing a hat.
"The first thing to know about the British, which I love, is there's an eccentricity about them" expressed in their love of and skill at wearing hats, says Mariette, 40, who was Malawi-born and Botswana-raised until his family immigrated to Britain when he was a child. "With the royal wedding, everyone wants to know who is wearing what and how they're wearing it, so there's a lot of attention now on hats."
Which means good business for milliners like Mariette, one of about a dozen top hatmakers to the rich and famous in the United Kingdom today. (Prices range from about $300 to just short of $1,000.)
Delicate yet wiry, dressed in sandals and madras shirt and speaking rapidly, Mariette himself doesn't need a hat ? he sports an eye-popping mohawk on the top of his elegant head.
"I like drama-and-diva moments," he says cheerily. "People don't usually come to me for low-key hats."
Indeed, Mariette's philosophy of hats is that they should be fun. He has also been inspired by the flora and fauna of his native Africa. "When you wear a hat, you get so much attention ? it's an icebreaker," he says. "Expressing yourself in a hat is half the fun."
The royal wedding gives milliners an opportunity to express themselves and show off their work, made for events including weddings, garden parties and social-season horse-racing meets such as Ascot and Epsom. Irish-born hat designer Philip Treacy is getting the brightest spotlight for his role in designing some of the hats in the royal bridal party, but Mariette has created at least one hat for an important wedding guest, though he won't say who. "You'd know her," he says coyly.
A party designer turned milliner, Mariette started making hats eight years ago and has since become famous for extravagantly decorated and sculptural designs, wedding pillboxes, jeweled hair accessories and bespoke (custom-made) creations for the head. His studio/workshop/showroom in a townhouse in London's upscale Chelsea neighborhood is adorned with his hat artworks.
"My designs are over-the-top and outlandish, but for some of my lady clients, you design around her personality and her outfit," Mariette says, holding one of his more elaborate creations, a red-and-black number almost as big as he is.
"It's really about listening to what the client wants and the occasion, (but) it's nice to break out of your comfort zone sometimes."
Of course, you probably won't see many of these showstopping-style hats at the royal wedding. "The rulebook for the royal wedding is nothing too ostentatious," he says. "Maybe rock stars and celebrities might do something more daring, but mostly it will be mainstream at the royal wedding."
After all, it's bad form to outdo the bride. Besides, the queen ?Queen Elizabeth II, grandmother to Prince William ? will be there, wearing a hat made especially for her by one of her longtime milliners. Mariette gives the queen all the credit for maintaining the traditional interest in hats in Britain.
"It's the queen, of course ? she wears hats to perfection," Mariette says. And what about America? If women don't usually wear hats except for practical reasons, then they may feel less certain about their ability to carry it off, he says.
Hats "still get attention at the Kentucky Derby and among the churchgoing society in the South," he says. "But with all the modern changes (in America), people have lost touch with millinery. It's your confidence in wearing a hat that is so important."
But Americans could pick it up again, he says: "Once you start wearing hats, you never go back."
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