As Mr. Jones recalled: ”Jean Paul mentioned to me, ‘I like the best way you look. Would you prefer to create some hats for my subsequent present?” Mr. Jones sat down and produced a bunch of brilliant felt fezzes with shiny tassels. Mr. Gauthier employed him on the spot.
“That is how I began in Paris,” Mr Jones mentioned.
Quickly Mr. Jones was making hats for Claude Montana, who was head of style for Lanvin, and for Ms. Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons, which had not too long ago begun exhibiting in Paris. He had met Ms. Kawakubo when she approached him at an airport in Alaska throughout a refueling cease on the best way to Tokyo and mentioned, “Stephen Jones, I like your hats.” He did quite a bit for her, as a black wool felt designed for a pink leotard pant swimsuit with gloved palms hugging the torso, which is likely one of the ensembles on show.
Mr. Jones’ longest relationship is with British designer John Galliano. They met within the early Nineties in Paris and located such concord collectively that they continued their partnership for many years – at Givenchy, Christian Dior and Maison Margiela, and at Mr. Galliano’s eponymous label. Amongst their appears collectively within the present: a couture opera coat in gold and blue-striped taffeta, for which Mr. Jones long-established big daisies to wrap across the head, and a copper-sequined robe worn with a copper-wire crown by Ms. n Jones which was embellished with amber seahorses and seashells and edged with an extended fringe of copper beads resin.
Within the middle room, a movie is projected of Mr. Jones making a fascinator with a sculpted 3-D Eiffel Tower in black silk taffeta. Mr. Jones takes a cardboard mannequin of the Eiffel Tower and wraps it with the tape in a cross. Then, with a thimble on his index finger, he secures the ribbon in place, sews it, provides a shiny pink tuft of tulle on high, slides it off the cardboard and onto a black Eiffel Tower wire body, and secures it to a wire headband. A hat is born in a matter of minutes.
At this time, Mr Jones is artistic director of hats at Dior – “28 years”, he mentioned proudly – whereas nonetheless freelancing for different homes and working his studio and retailer in Covent Backyard. As a result of whereas Mr. Jones has maintained his love affair with Paris for many years, he nonetheless lives in London.
“Once I’m in Paris, I keep in a small resort across the nook from Dior,” he mentioned. There’s silk on the partitions.
