Philip Treacy Overview

"Milliner" is too staid a term for Philip Treacy, contemporary sculptor of wacky headgear. The Irish, London-based artist dwells in an artistic field almost exclusively his own. He fashions extraordinary, otherworldly hats that threaten to throw the heads they adorn fantastically... [more]

"Milliner" is too staid a term for Philip Treacy, contemporary sculptor of wacky headgear. The Irish, London-based artist dwells in an artistic field almost exclusively his own. He fashions extraordinary, otherworldly hats that threaten to throw the heads they adorn fantastically off-balance. Since he established his own London shop in 1990, Treacy has been commissioned to make fabulous caps for designers like Karl Lagerfeld and Marc Bohan. His hats swivel and swirl. They jump to the sky and cry out for attention. They rest on heads like proud, extravagant statues. Treacy's 1999 collection featured an enormous black conical creation that punctuated its model like a triumphant exclamation point. Other models wore red-polka-dotted hats fit for madams. Scarves, ornamented with silver coin-like discs, cascaded down from their skulls to complete the image of quirky elegance. Treacy fashions headwear with the sensibility of a Surrealist, tempered with just a touch of good old-fashioned class. One of his hats slithers like a snake up from its wearer's cheek and sails above her head before plunging back down; it slides over forehead and eyebrow, then begins its final zigzag ascent, rising a full foot above her head. Another of Treacy's masterpieces looks like some kind of sea plant: pointy, green stakes jut out at odd angles from its happy owner's lid. Treacy's hats defy gravity. They boldly jump this way and that, complicating the figures of carefully composed supermodels. No, there is nothing subtle about the work of this madman milliner. With the imagination of an abstract artist, Treacy designs wild, vividly colored hats, hats comprised of extreme angles and daring proportions, hats that come together with the artist's predilection for superlative fancy. [show less]