Pip Hackett
Milliner Pip Hackett graduated from the Royal College of Art, and creates hats, headpieces and hair accessories that are stylish concoctions of feathers, flowers and sculptural shapes.
These pieces are individually crafted using traditional millinery techniques combined with a distinctive and contemporary feel.
Pip’s influences range from 1940s film noir, to Victorian romanticism and the “roaring twenties”, all given a contemporary reinvention. Her materials include her trademark feathers and flowers, beautiful vintage veiling, beads and sequins, antique silk all combined using traditional millinery techniques and a classic silhouette.
Having graduated from the RCA in 1996, Pip Hackett fast became one of Britain’s top couture milliners selling in Harrods, Liberty, Harvey Nichols. Her diffusion line for Designers at Debenhams sold in all Debenhams stores throughout the country for 13 years.
She has been running a successful business for the past 25 years. With a resident piece in the V&A and her work immortalised by not just one, but two Royal Mail First Class Stamps, she has collaborated with top designers from Thierry Mugler to Jasper Conran, creating hats for catwalk shows in London and Paris. Designed on screen for the Oscar nominated Girl With a Pearl Earring film, the multi award winning television show, Game of Thrones and the popular Strictly Come Dancing Saturday night show. Her work has been exhibited in a fine art context in Museums and Galleries throughout the world from the UK, Europe and even as far as Latin America. A personal highlight was the privilege to show at the Royal Academy of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
In 2001 she was bestowed the very greatest honour by the Royal Mail as her work was selected as one of Great Britain’s leading Milliners to appear on a 1st class postage stamp set ‘Magnificent Millinery’ alongside her contemporaries Philip Treacy and Stephen Jones.
In 2018 another 1st class postage stamp was released with her hat design for Diana Rigg’s character in The Game of Thrones to commemorate the most popular television show in the world.
During the Cultural Olympiad in 2013 she was invited to create her largest hat by the Mayor’s office for a bronze statue of Charles Fox to wear in Bloomsbury Square, London. She was even invited to create her own Smart Car as well as a bespoke Barbie for Elton John’s Aids Foundation.
Her hats are synonymous with her own personal style, which informs her inspiration. ‘I will find a fabulous 1950s frock in a vintage fair,’ she explains ‘and I will design a piece to compliment the outfit and that will subsequently lead onto a collection built around this new aesthetic. I am my hats, so I will always wear pieces myself, ascertaining feedback, garnering reaction… ’
Her originality and flare gives each piece a signature style; her classicism means her work transcends seasonal trends; each hat an investment for women to treasure and wear again and again.
