Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones

On November 25th 2008 at the British Fashion Awards avant-garde milliner Stephen Jones picked up the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design. Jones has come a long way from his Cheshire roots.

The finest milliner of his generation, he is cited by Anna Piaggi of Italian Vogue as “the maker of most beautiful hats in the world” and by Hamish Bowles, Vogue USA, as “a deft conjurer who can draw whimsy from a hat… His genius is to enhance the mystery, allure and wit of the wearer”

Jones exploded onto the London fashion scene in the late seventies – by day a student at the prestigious Central St. Martins School of Art, by night frequenting the legendary Blitz club in Covent Garden with contemporaries John Galliano, Isabella Blow, Princess Julia, Boy George, Steve Strange, and Spandau Ballet. His captivating, witty, exquisitely crafted millinery earned him commissions from Visage and Spandau Ballet – his designs helping to define the fashion of the New Romantic movement.

By 1980 Jones had opened his first salon in Covent Garden, designing hats for Jasper Conran and Zandra Rhodes and attracting a diverse clientele from Diana, Princess of Wales to Mick Jagger. Since then he has collaborated with some of most influential designers of the last 28 years, his creations gracing the runway in London for Giles, Hardy Amies and Basso & Brooke; in New York for Marc Jacobs; Tokyo for Comme des Garcons; and most famously in Paris for John Galliano, followed soon after by his appointment to Dior in 1996.