In yesterday's post we looked at architectural styles from the '50s. Let's continue the thread to focus on architectural hats and in particular on the creations of milliner Claude Saint-Cyr.
Born Simone Naudet in 1911, she started her millinery training when she turned 18, later working for Parisian designers such as Jean Patou, Marie-Louise Carven and Rose Descat.
After working in London she changed her name to Claude Saint-Cyr (sometimes Claude St-Cyr or Claude St. Cyr), opened her own millinery salon in 1937 in Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris, and married the interior designer Georges Martin.
During the 1950s she opened a shop in London, started collaborating with royal household's couturier Norman Hartnell and became a favourite with members of the British royal family, notably the Queen, Queen Mother (she was the exclusive milliner to the Queen Mother), Princess Margaret and the Duchess of Windsor.
Saint-Cyr supplied hats to the royal household from the 1950s on, and also got commissioned the wedding veil of Princess Margaret in 1960.
After closing her own salon in 1964, she continued to act as an advisor to other design houses (including French milliner Jean Barthet) until the mid-1990s and died in 2002.
Very early designs created by Saint-Cyr perfectly fitted the hat trends of the time, even though the French milliner tried to add her own touch: she covered for example one hat with silk striped fabrics in bold combination of colours such as sky blue and black and then knotted the fabric on the back of the hat.
Soon Saint-Cyr started experimenting more with quirkier and more original shapes and silhouettes. In the '30s she created for example a series of foldable hats: it was possible to reduce the designs to a flat form, but, thanks to their ingenious construction, a simple gesture would have transformed what looked like a flat piece of fabric into an engaging three-dimensional headpiece characterised by sinuous forms or sharp angles.
Another innovation Saint-Cyr introduced was the oblique hat, in which one side of the brim is angled, enabling decorative details to be placed on the crown (the style remained a favourite with the British royals and in particular with the Queen).
Other innovations regarded the materials of the hats, especially during the war rations of the 1940s: Saint-Cyr was a master in fabric manipulation (one of her signatures was the treatment of the felt, with its subtle graduation from flat to plush) and hat construction and she was gifted with a refined design sensibility.
In the '50s Saint-Cyr collaborated with her husband Georges Martin making hats in traditional tapestry woven by Aubusson-based Atelier Pinton. Martin had used this sturdy and colourful textile to uphoplster the chairs in her wife's atelier.
Weavers had to be taught how to build a hat using this textile and Saint-Cyr produced almost 200 hats over four years with this tapestry. This could be considered one of the first experiments in interior design fabrics applied to fashion and in particular to millinery.
As the years passed, Saint Cyr started reducing her headpieces to the minimum, removing the fabric layer by layer and leaving only the essential structure of the hat.
In the '50s Saint-Cyr produced several cocktail hats with black silk and netting or with tulle and wire forming large petals, ideal designs for elegant afternoon or evening ensembles.
As hats went out of fashion, Saint-Cyr stripped down her early cocktail designs and created minimalist hats made of an almost invisible black structure that circled the head of the wearer (View this photo) or turned the hat veil into a hood-like headpiece, a sort of ghost-like interpretation of her most iconic pieces.
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