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The Spanish Dancer by John Singer Sargent, painted in the Nocturne style inspired the mood of “Gypsy and the Nightingale”.
A soft diffused palette of neutrals with accents of ruby red and rose pink featuring wool felts and fine silk satins exhibit an array of lacquered and glittered butterflies, linen blooms, vintage braids and veiling, Chantilly lace, quills and handsome plumes.
Images: “Paloma” noir butterfly headpiece, JSS’s ”The Spanish Dancer” painting and “Malena” French lace felt hat.
Head over to the Collections tab to view more new Confections.

Sniff…it’s over. The greatest hat show in town is finally rollin on. Today was the last viewing opportunity to peek, gawp and swoon at a truly epic collection of hats. The Queensland Art Gallery bids bon voyage to one of the most engaging exhibitions of recent time. Adieu x

Sweet Darla Baker looks smashing in Lil Jen’s Étoile Confection from the Sweet Liberty collection, styled beautifully with a sparkly rococo beauty spot and her peachy smooth birthday suit, the bejewelled dog is pretty damn cute too.
Stay tuned for more gorgeous images from this beauty shoot.

Brr, It’s cold.
Problem: We humans lose 75% of our body heat through our heads.
Not. Very. Efficient.
Solution: Confection by Lil Jen Winter wool felt hat worn on said frozen bonce
= super warm. Hurrah!
This gorgeous hat was blocked on a superb 1940’s hat block, in keeping with the Lil Jen vintage vamp style.
Gussied up with beribboned bows, she’s a sultry winter warmer.

Illustration is often a necessary process to consolidate the idea for your next hat or collection of hats. It is most useful when assisting the client to see the vision of splendor you have in mind for them. The sketch is often no more than a few lines to capture the gesture and style of the hat and an opportunity to perfect the scale and proportions. Sometimes when the sketch requires more detail I’ll break out my trusty Derwents to get the mood or theme across with pretty coloured highlights and occasionally I’ll draw a cheeky lil outfit suggestion.

Sketching gets the idea out of your head, is much quicker than making the hat and allows you to revisit the concept at a later date. A little bit like a catchy tune or a poem that might pop brightly in your mind for a brilliant but fleeting moment, unless you get it down on paper its gone baby gone! So for every hat that gets a pen and ink memento there are many, many more floating about in the ether.

The milliner’s lament! How I wish for a third hand to hold that bow just so, or as I woefully watch the almost ikebana precise petal arrangement flutter away to a pile of pretty nothing because I was too busy being creative and didn’t open the pin box before proceeding with the next hat master piece. Oh bothersome unthreaded needle not at the ready. Fools certainly do rush in!

Anyhoo, here are my hands. My pretty vintage ex mannequin hands with perfect polish, so lithe, so finely turned out and quite unlike any milliners hands with our collection of cuts, bruises and trade worn wearies. Though I’ve no real use for vintage mannequin hands (well they aren’t heads for hats) I thought them pretty and have set them in still life for your viewing pleasure.

Here is another of my vintage mannequins, recently introduced to the the other gals. Hedy, the mistress of aloof. A haughty, angular and slightly scary broad, cast in the finest fibreglass the 50’s could avail. Named after the fabulous actress and inventor Miss Hedy Lamarr, she possesses the same august upturned nose and willful raised brow, striking a perfect pose in a magnificent magenta Lil Jen Confection. Stitched from a pattern that was drafted on a favourite hat block. It features a duchess satin bow and an opulent bird of paradise trim in violet and cerise with matching satin neck tie.

Once upon a time there was a young lass completely bewitched by the music of Mozart, Handel and Beethoven. She was absorbed in the production of wearable ornaments with rococo flourishes while daydreaming of a life lived in the paintings of Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Well that young lass was me and I still have an enduring passion for the frivolity, romance and decadence of this gracious era. Something I made half a life time ago (gosh, that sounds old!) was glinting at me under other “stuff” whilst clearing my section of treasures and old tat in my folks attic.

Well howdy stranger!
I had found a baroque bodice I made when still a teen. I remember hand printing musical score onto the sleeves, pleating the peplum of piano keys, modelling the treble and bass clefs, and beading the masses of pearls. It was my heartfelt homage to opera, art and beauty. I couldn’t part with it then and think I shall keep it a little bit longer, sentimental soul that I am. It represents a rosy moment in time and therefore becomes a keeper. So here is a picture before it is placed back in my section of organised clutter or as I prefer “a curated collection of treasures tended by diligent conservators”.

A delicate French lace and ribbon work bridal tiara adorned with vintage diamante and gossamer fine gilt thread for lovely Autumn bride Annabelle.

My favourite things to draw have always been trinkets from a showgirl’s trousseau, portraits, girls, plants, flowers, taxidermy, patterns, architectural details and old scientific instruments to be specific. Here are some super quick and clean line work dolly birds sporting an assortment of silky threads and Lil Jen Confections.