Philip Treacy Quotations

People, when they buy a hat, they can't explain why they want to buy it or why they want it, but they do. It's like chocolate.

Try on 100 different hats if you can, until you find the one that suits you best. It's a trial and error thing.

There's a technicality to designing and wearing hats. A hat is balancing the proportions of your face; it's like architecture or mathematics.

The classic hat image was during the Forties and Fifties, and Elizabeth Taylor was the epitome of that; she was the ultimate celebrity of excess and glamour, and she worked major sun hats.

Not long ago, a hat was a conformist accessory. Then the 1960s came along, and young people didn't want to wear hats.

I empathise with the fact that people want to look their best. A hat is all about how it makes you feel - it's so much better than a nip and tuck, and a lot less painful.

I believe in originality, primarily. However, it's important to know what there has been before to aim in that direction. Art history informs us. It informs our mind. I like to look at books, exhibitions, paintings, as a computer, subconsciously taking on information.

There is no attitude required. The hat brings the attitude. And when people try on a hat they like, it is a bit of fun. It makes them laugh. You don't laugh when you put on a pair of shoes, but you do with a hat.

A person carries off the hat. Hats are about emotion. It is all about how it makes you feel.

Fashion is an illusion. It's a multibillion-pound industry that has to appear frivolous. Designers work and work and work, all night sometimes.