VISITING MELBOURNE
Torb and Reiner
Some years ago, while preparing to move to Melbourne to study fashion and costume design,
Lindsay Whitehead attended several millinery courses and workshops, one of them at Torb and Reiner.
Coincidently they had a vacancy in the company at the time and he ended up staying a bit longer than for just one workshop. Then, after working there for a few years, he was asked to take over the company and did in March 2016.
Torb and Reiner might be best known as a millinery supplier, but they also design and produce made-to-measure hats as well as make ready-to-wear headpieces for the Spring Races which are sold during the season in a separate room behind the shop. In winter, Lindsay starts working on the new spring collection together with milliner Stephanie Spencer, who also works in the shop, as Lindsay explained. “Racing wear is basically what the hat market in Australia is about. Ordinary felt hats aren’t worn a lot here as we just haven’t got the climate for it. Because of my theatre background, I like designs that are a bit extravagant. Extravagance isn’t just about design, but can also be found in little details like the use of different products or unusual materials, for example. We like to include unusual materials in our own designs, but we offer them in our shop to other designers as well.
The various milliners who give workshops at our place have turned out to be a good source for new materials. When a milliner comes to teach a new technique and uses a specific material, we buy it. So if a guest tutor happens to use lightweight clay as a base for flowers in her workshop, we make sure to have that in stock. Some of the
Lindsay
Whitehead with one of
his favourite materials: feathers
newer materials that are doing quite well at the moment are thermoplastics. These are materials that are used not just by milliners but also by the theatrical world and in cosplays (costume play), because it’s light and very easy to mould.”
Customers of Torb and Reiner can attend workshops there and even get to use their extensive range of hat blocks which cover almost a complete wall on one side of the shop.
“We have a hat block library. People can come in, block whatever they want and then finish the hats at their own place. This service is being used by quite a number of students who haven’t got blocks available, or by people who don’t want to spend that much money on blocks themselves. And of course we use them with our own classes, as we do some private tutoring as well. If someone wants to learn a specific technique, they come in and Stephanie or myself will teach them one-on-one. So clients can book either a block, or us. What’s in the shop is not the whole collection, as we have a lot more. I like to see these blocks used a lot, and by a lot of people. It fits in with our philosophy of sustainability. We try to work ethically and think of sustainability with everything we do. We create as little waste as possible. We do not pack all of our products in plastic, and use all kinds of recycled materials when we send orders to our clients. We also like to source materials from suppliers that we know are paying their workers properly. These things are important for us.”
For more information, see
www.torbandreiner.com
november 2017 | 67
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