Vivienne H. Lake
Vivienne H. Lake studied applied arts before she discovered millinery, in which she trained in both France and the UK. She went on to work in some of the top UK milliners’ workrooms while growing her freelance work and teaching, which now absorbs all of her time. Her most recent work includes collaborations with Tiscar Espadas, Tolu Coker, Renata Brenha and Harris Reed (recently for the Met Gala and the Victoria and Albert Museum),
Sage Townsend
Sage Townsend is a British multidisciplinary artist and educator. She aims to imbue her work with a cross-cultural dialogue about attitudes and aesthetic values relating to the female form; the underlying message of her creative projects is that expectations should be challenged. By promoting fashion accessories to act as more than just functional or aesthetic objects, she explores defining their role as a platform to address political, ethical and social ideas and expectations. Sage’s multi-award-winning work has been exhibited worldwide, including in Tokyo, Beijing, Buenos Aries, Venice, and London.
Flora McLean
Flora Mclean is a hat maker and has twenty years’ experience working with her own fashion accessory brand House of Flora, a fashion design consultancy specialising in avant-garde headwear for the catwalk, fashion campaigns, collectors and famous musicians.
Flora's hats have been celebrated since she won the Jerwood Makers prize 2010. Her work has been exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as part of the Anthology of Hats exhibition 2011, and also in Basel Spielzeug Museum as part of Mut Zum Hut in 2020. Flora is an experienced educator and is the senior fashion lecturer in Footwear Accessories Millinery and eyewear at London’s Royal College of Art.
Lucy Barlow
Lucy Barlow has been a milliner for over 40 years, starting in Bond St and moving to the catwalks of Paris.
Known for her stitched braid straw, she fuses traditional and street couture. In 2017, having worked in the trade since the age of 16, she did an MA at the RCA. Moved by refugees and the homeless, her collection was called ‘Life Saver’. It focused on sleeping bags, life jackets and protection, and saw her creating the speaker and sleeping bag hat; the hat being the symbol of shelter and music its elevation.
Maxwell Shoroye
Maxsho is a sound and music enthusiast, he combines his experience from DJing and live performances with his creative practice as a designer.
Maxsho’s work is about depicting the invisible sounds that surround us with digital visualisation. Utilising sound as a tool to realise abstract ideas. Through this process he highlights its importance in everyday culture and society. Employing music as a passport to explore different times, emotions and worlds. One of his aims is to develop a social exchange between sound, design and fashion.
Karen Henriksen
Karen Henriksen creates tailored hats and caps for men and women. Working from her London studio at Cockpit Bloomsbury, she brings a milliner’s sensibility, playfulness and craftsmanship to everyday headwear.
Following a BA Hons in fashion in the late 1980s, Karen went on to pursue a career in millinery. In 2003 she graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art. Since then, she has continued to explore and create her own versions of classic hat styles.
Karen has shown at Paris Fashion Week since 2007, and her hats can be found in stores across Europe, Asia and North America. Her own online shop was something of a pioneer, established in 2009, and continues to grow and thrive.
Vesna Pesic
Vesna Pesic is a millinery artist and educator, bringing years of experience in fashion to her practice. Vesna is dedicated to crafting poetical handmade headpieces that often lie between art and fashion.
Vesna is a devoted practitioner of Tai Chi; recurrent themes in her work centre on movement and multiple meanings. She creates sculptural pieces by mixing traditional millinery craftsmanship with other disciplines like cuir-bouilli. Vesna is a lecturer at Morley College and visiting lecturer at RADA. She is a founding member of the British Hat Guild. Vesna was awarded Harold Tillman Scholarship to study MA in Fashion Artefact at the University of the Arts London (2011).
Jo Cope
Jo Cope is a UK based female contemporary fashion artist, and has been pushing boundaries for almost two decades.
Jo's interest lies in creating a new role for fashion, creating socially active and highly crafted vessels, which can exist and communicate both on and off the body. Jo works with Shelter as a Creative Projects Consultant and in 2020 curated the Shoes Have Names exhibition at Coal Drops Yard London, in collaboration with the charity. This year she has returned to curate 'Wherever I Lay My Hat'.
Her work has been represented at a diverse range of prestigious events worldwide, including the Venice Design Biennale 2021, London Craft Week, Fashion Matters at Buckingham Palace 2018 and the Material Movement Gala at Sadler's Wells Theatre 2017.