Felt beret with feather embellishment from the Lock Couture by Awon Golding collection
Crin bird hat from Awon’s S/S 2021 collection
INTERVIEW
Awon at work in her atelier
comprehensive understanding of the manufacturing process as well as valuable insight into the financial side of running a business. The best bit was that I got to fly out to China twice a year to visit the factories and liaise with the teams there to create samples. I followed every step back from the finished high street product to the factory floor. Manufacture on this scale is a massive part of the fashion industry and so working for Indigo Lime was a really good exercise in commerciality, understanding things like price points, production chains and tallying up the cost of every step.”
Lock & Co
As well as producing her own couture range, Awon now designs two collections per year for Lock & Co, the London-based hat company proud to be the oldest hat shop in the world (the shop first opened in 1676). Located at No. 6 St James’s
Street SW1, and boasting a Royal Warrant, Lock & Co draws on its unique British heritage to produce hats that are known for their scrupulous attention to detail, quality and fit. Awon says that working for such an iconic brand at the same time as creating her own couture label has very specific challenges. “It’s kind of almost schizophrenic,” says
Awon. “I’m obviously trying to create two very distinctive brands and even after five years with Lock & Co I’m still trying to figure out how best to do the two things simultaneously. I’m completely at liberty to create what I want for Lock Couture by Awon Golding and so it’s a huge amount of responsibility. Each year I design 12 pieces for Spring/ Summer and six pieces for Autumn/ Winter. I’m in charge of everything, from deciding the colours and the shapes, to setting the budget and the price points. Then of course I need to ensure the hats are made to the highest
standards of workmanship. I do
a sample collection with the help of the workroom (Lock & Co employs one full- time and two part-time milliners) and then I generally hand the making over to them. I always create a production ‘bible’ for each piece so that in theory anyone can come in, pick up the file and complete each hat to my exact specification based on the instructions and photographs I’ve left. The only occasion when that differs is if there’s a particularly challenging, high-end piece in the mix, in which case I sometimes get involved in the making too. We’re currently working on S/S 24, so we’ll shoot the hats in November and launch them in March.” With Lock & Co hitting new sales
records on a daily basis and having had its best ever Ascot last year, it is obvious that Awon is hitting the right note, but she says that she continues to put an immense amount of pressure on herself. “I want to do my absolute best for the
november 2023 | 23
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