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Stephen Jones
PROFILES PAGE
The London milliner Stephen Jones is a surrealist. Born in 1957 he graduated from London's St Martin's School of Art in 1979, and began to make hats for friends. It was at the beginning of that period of creativity and outrageousness that was to make London the centre for wild and iconoclastic fashion ideas. Pop music and clubbing were at the heart of all youthful culture and they had an enormous influence on Jones. He made hats for Boy George, Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran and, by 1980, was sufficiently established to open his own shop. Stephen Jones is possibly the most original milliner working today. His hats echo Schiaparelli's from the 1930s, but are always completely up to the minute in mood. He entirely understands the zeitgeist of the times. In the Fashion Institute of Technology's huge 'Fashion and Surrealism' exhibition of 1987, Jones' hats stood out as having an artistic integrity rare in fashion, holding their own with the work of some of the greatest designers of the twentieth century.

           
The Royal Mail 19.06.01 / Nick Knight
pic by Kate Garner
Stephen Jones Milliner, First appeared in i-D n. 1.  "The best thing about  the 80s was getting a Gold American Express Card.   The difference between now and five years ago is that now I firmly believe that anything is possible........1985 was the first year that I sued anybody !  In five years time, I'd like to have designed my own car and have a telephone swichboard in my flat."  Stephen describes himself as..... " One lady owner,  1957 G. T. model with new engine and good bodywork."
CLUB : "The plain chocolate ones with raisins"
RECORD :  "Daley Thomson's"


                
i-D Love-It issue - 1980 / 1985
                              october 1985
Stephen Jones' club style reached the Parisian catwalks partly as a result of the video 'Do You Really Want to Hurt Me', in which Boy George wore a fez he had designed. Jean-Paul Gaultier saw the video and invited Jones to design the hats. The appeal of Stephen Jones' hats was that they were more French than the French, quirkily and arrestingly stylish in their perfected irreverence, following the witty tradition of Schiaparelli.
Jones combined a thorough, classical training with the camp wit of street fashion. His international success was due to his professional expertise and determination, not just his ideas. Jones created custom – made extravagances for London club and pop heroes and for royalty; by 1980 he had a stall at the back of PX's shop. Millinery was fashionable again and the almost extinct skills of fine hat making were revived with gusto.


'     
The Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion'
STEPHEN JONES MENU
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