How does your current studio differ from other spaces you have had?
Primarily, there’s so much more space, although it’s a bit like having a large handbag and finding your stuff expands to fill it. When I first started millinery, I was in a tiny Notting Hill flat, making hats on the dining room table and clearing everything away each night. Later, when I bought my own flat, the kitchen became my workroom. I wasn’t much of a cook, so the oven stayed pristine and doubled as a drying cupboard. Now that we have a bigger kitchen, we have a double oven. My husband Trix uses one side for cooking, and the other is still my drying cupboard. Compared to my previous spaces I now have lots of storage - drawers with glass fronts for fabrics and trims, a whole collection of picnic and wicker baskets for foundation materials, and some amazing architectural plan chests where everything has a home. It’s wonderful
to lay out the threads in a drawer and see all the colours at a glance. Of course, I still haven’t labelled the drawers, so I rely on memory to know what lives where. There’s also a cupboard close to the studio which looks like it might be a broom cupboard, or even a downstairs toilet. Absolutely not. It’s the perfect block cupboard!
What is your favourite bit of studio kit and why?
My favourite bit of kit is something called a pony. I first saw one at a fish leather convention in The Hague and fell in love with it. The pony holds two pieces of leather tightly together while I sew, essentially a third hand. I’d recommend it to anyone who works with leather because it makes precision stitching so much easier. I also adore my portable steamer. I started out using my mum’s old steam kettle on the hob, then graduated to a huge wallpaper steamer while I was saving for a proper millinery one. But I’ve ended up sticking with my fabulous clothes steamer. It’s light, reliable, and perfect for my butterfly brain as it can move with me from one project zone to another.
What projects are you working on at the moment?
Right now, I’m preparing a piece for an exhibition called Doom Reimagined, involving 20 artists responding to a painting. It’s unusual for me to be making a hat that doesn’t have to fit on someone’s head. I’m also pulling together a collection of hats for the
HATalk | APR 2026
Jane’s
portable steamer
INDEX PA G E
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42
