An insight to the milliner… Rosie Olivia

Hello!

I have been missing in action for the last few months as I had a little girl! We named her Florence and she has kept me very busy but we are loving life. I am taking a bit of time out of the studio to enjoy this precious time but don’t worry I am sure I will be back making hats with a new collection for SS19!

Whilst having a new little lady in my life, I have met lots of great new people and everyone has asked me how I got into millinery as I am the first milliner they have met! So, I have decided to share my answer, so here we go……

I have always been very creative and loved my art and design technology classes in school. I went to Nottingham Trent University to do a degree in Decorative Arts which involved experimenting with wood, glass, ceramics, print and embroidery. During my degree I took some internships at Philip Treacy and Stephen Jones where I learnt a lot about the millinery trade and that's where I fell in love with hats. For my final degree show I created a range of unusual hats and left Uni with a 1st Degree. From there, I enrolled on a millinery short course at Central Saint Martins and also completed an Enterprise business course with the Prince’s Trust.

Rosie Olivia Millinery was then established in 2011. Since then, luckily and with hard work, my business has gone from strength to strength, each year gaining another retail outlet or hat hire shop selling my hats and increasing my bespoke customer clientele. I love what I do, my favourite thing is to make bespoke hats for ladies who are attending happy event such as weddings or the races. I love meeting with clients, seeing their outfits and actually I really love just making the hats themselves even though they are very time-consuming to make.

So here I am now, on maternity leave, designing a new collection to come back from a few months off with a bang! I will let you all know once the new SS19 hats are ready to view!