The fashion media recently announced that milliner Stephen Jones will receive the Outstanding Achievement Award at next week’s British Fashion Awards ceremony. Jones’ passion for hats is clear from his creations that can be admired at his studio in Great Queen Street, London. Throughout his career Jones has collaborated with many designers, among them also Zandra Rhodes, Jasper Conran, Comme des Garçons, Marc Jacobs, Balenciaga, Vivienne Westwood and Galliano just to mention a few, while his creations have been worn by celebrities such as Madonna, Boy George, Dita Von Teese and Kylie Minogue. As much as I like the visionary headdresses he has done for famous fashion houses and celebrities, what I love about Stephen Jones is the fact that he admires an Italian icon of style, designer Simonetta.
Simonetta Colonna di Cesarò was born on 10th April 1922 in Rome. Her father descended from a Sicilian noble family, her mother was a symbol of elegance for both young Simonetta and her sister Mita, she had indeed Russian aristocratic origins, loved visiting the European culture capitals and had a passion for haute couture creations. As a young child, Simonetta loved creating dresses for her dolls, but soon the elegant and happy lifestyle she had as a child was disrupted by the war. Confined for three years by the fascist regime and then arrested again in 1944, Simonetta showed an incredible rebellious will and, after the war, she reacted to the fate that had dispossessed her family of their happiness and launched in 1946 her fashion house.
The designer showed she had great fantasy and creativity, recycling humble materials and fabrics and reusing them in her first collection that featured fourteen outfits. Little by little Simonetta’s creations became more refined, richer in their cut and details, while the designer concentrated also on refining the volumes of her creations to give the figure a sort of enhanced solemnity. Enthusiastic about what she saw during the first catwalk that launched the "made in Italy", organised in Florence by Giovanni Battista Giorgini in the early '50s, Bergdorf Goodman's buyer Miss Frankau helped Simonetta arriving in the States. Her designs and her style contributed to her fame and Simonetta became known as "the glamorous countess". Nobody could disagree with this definition, especially after seeing the picture taken by Norman Parkinson for US Vogue in 1952 that portrays Simonetta proudly overlooking the skyscrapers of New York from a window of the Plaza Hotel, wearing a short and ample jacket in red faille decorated with beaded motifs and taffeta matador trousers.
It was exactly this picture that fascinated young Stephen Jones when he first saw it in 1976 while leafing through the book In Vogue by Brigid Keenan. At the time Jones was a student at Central Saint Martin’s and that picture haunted him for one main reason: though elegant and aristocratic, Simonetta’s attitude wasn’t too different from Johnny Rotten’s. Twenty-eight years after seeing that picture, Jones met Simonetta in Paris and, in 2004, he dedicated her his Autumn/Winter collection, entitled "La Prima Donna" (The First Woman).
Some of the hats vaguely reminded of the creations done for Simonetta by Roman milliner Canessa, but the main inspiration was definitely Simonetta herself as the hat that recalls her stunning leopard coat, created for her in 1959 by her husband, the couturier Fabiani, or the fedora that recalls the silhouette, colour and embroidery of the jacket Simonetta wore in Parkinson’s picture or the cherry hat that evokes the Canessa creation for the designer's Spring 1959 catwalk prove. As the years passed Simonetta worked on altering the silhouette of her creations, that became even more sensual and graceful and, at the end of the ‘50s, she underlined how important it was to always accessorise an outfit with a hat.
Different experiences brought Simonetta to Paris with husband and tailor Fabiani and then to India, but I have always found fascinating the fact that she inspired so much Stephen Jones. Who knows what would have happened to his career if he had never seen that amazing picture of Simonetta.
So I guess that in the Outstanding Award Jones will receive there is also a tiny bit of Italy and a lot of Simonetta's cosmopolitan style. I just hope that we will see more of them during the exhibition that will open in February 2009 in the Victoria & Albert Museum's Porter Gallery, “Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones”, set to coincide with the next London Fashion Week.
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