London Hat week 2020
It really was the ‘last hurrah’ before the lockdown. The X Terrace London Hat Week Press Preview Show at the Shangri-la Hotel, at the Shard, London showed 54 hats on the theme of ‘retro’ or ‘future’ and what a range of fabulous hats we saw. We had reached the not shaking hands or hugging friends stage but that didn’t stop it being a lovely event.
My headpiece was called ‘Starling Murmuration’.
I took the ‘future’ as my inspiration. I imagined a time, say 2048, where the local authority rules become more stringent; when our waste crisis means we have to justify every tiny thing we throw out. What rules will emerge? Will they measure the weight and volume of each household’s bins? Every single thing we dispose of must be justified. I looked into the contents of my bin (metaphorically not literally!) and wondered what I could use to make my hat.
I didn’t quite know how I was going to do it, but I did know that I was going to work with used teabags.
It didn’t take long to decide what materials to use because I love tea; I love the drink itself. I want builders’ tea, good and strong, with a tiny dash of milk. My favourite at the moment are Clipper because they don’t contain plastic and they brew up strong enough for my tastes. But I also love the story of tea. I love that it’s a cure-all, a restorative; that when I drink a cup, I feel a connection to my family with whom I have shared so many cups. And with my granny who taught me to drink it and made a cup for us when we got home from school.
I remember an exercise we did at art school in which we had to set up a mechanism to instruct our peers to make our art for us; I guess it was about removing our control. This was mine: I put a large piece of paper on the floor by the kettle and a sign inviting anyone who made tea to throw/put/place their used tea bag onto the paper. These teabags created delicious splatters and nutty prints that I’ve never quite fallen out of love with.
I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away - the dried tea bags, not the prints - and they were lovingly collected in a bowl, like an eccentric ‘pot pourri.’ This was packed and moved with our goods and chattels to Bangkok in 2005 and then returned with us in 2018. Yes, a bowl of dried teabags. I always knew I wanted to make something from them, I just wasn’t sure what.
Starling Murmuration then, was really many years in the making.
If you’d like to see my fabulous Pinterest board of tea (and occasionally coffee) art (not mine), it’s here and proves that if I am a little odd, I’m not alone.
PS As a note of interest, you’ll see that the headband on the model is totally visible. In reality, a milliner will match this to the colour of the customer’s hair so that it’s as unseen as possible. I knew the exhibition ‘heads’ were white, so I left it white. That won’t happen when you commission me to make you a headpiece!
RELATED CONTENT:
