REPORT
was because Otto Lucas offered jobs to women who were looking for safety: “Otto Lucas never forgot how he had found safety himself in the UK when he had come a little earlier than others. You had to have work to get permission to enter the UK, so by giving these people jobs he managed to rescue a few of them.”
Otto Lucas was extremely driven and
worked hard. By the 1950s, his work was internationally renowned, worn by celebrities and high society women including Greta Garbo and Wallis Simpson, and graced the covers of British Vogue more than ten times. His hats were stocked in prestigious shops around London and other countries worldwide, including Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, and David Jones. Besides making hats for private clients,
Otto Lucas supplied other fashion designers and stores as well, as Lucie explains: “He set up different lines for each type of client. For private clients there were the couture hats, the one- offs uniquely made for each customer. Then came the Atelier Lucas line, which was the equivalent of wholesale couture. These hats were ready-made and produced in small quantities, but still quite expensive and made from high quality materials. For department stores he offered the more affordable Otto Lucas Junior label, a cheaper alternative made from less expensive materials. This way, he covered a big part of the market. It was said there wasn’t a shop in America where you couldn’t buy an Otto Lucas
hat. He managed to make his brand not only very well-known but financially extremely successful as well, hence his nickname the ‘milliner millionaire’. In the last year of his business, he sold 55,000 hats.”
Otto Lucas had a great eye for design and had good taste, but he was not a maker of hats himself. He had a dedicated team of employees and designers, which included well-known milliners such as Frederick Fox and Philip Somerville. In the workroom, each designer oversaw one table around which would sit about ten workers. “In the 1960s, there were four long tables,” remembers former employee Brenda Elphee. “On our table there was a French designer in charge (whose name, unfortunately, I don’t recall).” Brenda came to work for Otto Lucas right after she finished college in 1967, where she did millinery as part of a dress course. “When I just started, I did a lot of the easier tasks, such as shaping grosgrain ribbon, sewing ribbons, linings and labels in, or attaching trimmings. Quite quickly I moved on to working on all types of hats, from silk flower hats – very laborious – to felt hats. You would work on whatever was put in front of you by the designer for your table. One thing that we didn’t have to do was blocking, as there was a separate room
A coral-red velvet pillar box hat by Otto Lucas, c. 1945–1950
where all the hats were blocked by a team of three men. Mr Lucas did not come very often into the workroom and we hardly ever came into the showroom where the customers visited – these were two strictly separated worlds.” Brenda left the workroom in April 1969 when she got married. “When Mr Lucas heard from the other women that I was going to marry, he supplied the flowers for my own headwear and for the bridesmaid. He also told the other women to take me to a wholesaler where I could choose beads and crystal drops for my wedding dress. He may have been a very powerful and strong man but he was also very kind. I did enjoy working there, and the ladies at my table were lovely.” The business was still running at
full steam when it all came to an end the moment Otto Lucas died in a plane crash on his way to an opera in Salzburg in October 1971. As there was no family, there was no one to inherit the company. His business closed and what remains are only the stories – and hundreds of thousands of hats made over the decades.
More information
www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ museum-london-docklands/whats- on/exhibitions/fashion-city
Emerald green satin hat
designed by Otto Lucas Junior for
Harrods, c. 1960s
Mid-blue hat by Otto Lucas couture, c. 1945–50 november 2023 | 45
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