Top 70 Quotes & Sayings by Philip Treacy

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Irish designer Philip Treacy.
Last updated on November 22, 2024.
Philip Treacy

Philip Anthony Treacy is an Irish haute couture milliner, or hat designer, who has been mostly based in London for his career, and who was described by Vogue magazine as "perhaps the greatest living milliner". In 2000, Treacy became the first milliner in eighty years to be invited to exhibit at the Paris haute couture fashion shows. He has won British Accessory Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards five times, and has received public honours in both Britain and Ireland. His designs have been displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I like hats that make the heart beat faster.
When you're wearing something on your head, you feel beautiful.
Try on 100 different hats if you can, until you find the one that suits you best. It's a trial and error thing. — © Philip Treacy
Try on 100 different hats if you can, until you find the one that suits you best. It's a trial and error thing.
When people come and visit me and have a hat made, it's a little bit like visiting a psychiatrist, but they don't actually realize that.
Often, what makes my job so exciting is designing for the mother whose dream has been to wear one of my hats at her child's wedding. I feel as responsible for making her feel like a million dollars as I do for somebody in the public eye.
The personality of the wearer and the hat makes the hat.
The only person I never made a hat for was my mother because my mother didn't really - she preferred to make her own hats. I mean, she was intrigued by everything, but she didn't want one of my hats. She made her own.
Hats are really for ultimate occasions, so when I make one, I try to do something different, something noticeable.
The success of a hat definitely lies with balancing the personality of the wearer with the type of occasion. Don't listen to those rules about face shape.
Somebody can feel elegant without being elegant. It's a personality.
There's a technicality to designing and wearing hats. A hat is balancing the proportions of your face; it's like architecture or mathematics.
Fashion is an illusion. It's a multibillion-pound industry that has to appear frivolous. Designers work and work and work, all night sometimes.
Women come into our shop for that ultimate moment in their life. They're buying a dream. They're buying a moment for themselves. That's what I sell - moments. — © Philip Treacy
Women come into our shop for that ultimate moment in their life. They're buying a dream. They're buying a moment for themselves. That's what I sell - moments.
Hats make people feel good, and that's the point of them.
When you meet someone, you meet their face. It's the most potent part of the body to embellish.
When people think of hats, they think of her majesty the queen.
Hats are attached to special moments in people's lives - weddings, or the races. In difficult times, people still get married; they still want to look their best.
I believe in a democratic approach to fashion: if you feel good, then great. You may not look good, but it's not the problem.
I am very proud to be Irish.
Hats are the epitome of Englishness, and a royal wedding is the penultimate moment for a hat designer. I'm Irish, but I am a royalist and I believe in fantasy.
I believe that I am a hat designer, not a milliner.
I particularly like to travel for work because you see a completely different side of the country you're visiting.
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.
Hats are radical; only people that wear hats understand that.
Royalty is completely different than celebrity. Royalty has a magic all its own.
I always design the hat with the wearer in mind; otherwise, it's an inanimate object.
My mother had a sewing machine. I was never allowed to use it, but I was so fascinated by this little needle going up and down joining fabric together that I'd use it when my mother went out to feed the chickens.
I remember in the early nineties people saying the hat was just for old women, but that's ridiculous.
I'm representative of 21st century Irish design, so I promote Irishness all over the world wherever I go.
I must point out - Sarah Jessica Parker is not a diva - she's one of these pop culture characters that everybody likes.
In Rome, I particularly love the history, churches, sculptures and architecture and the fact that you can walk along a tiny cobbled street and turn the corner to find the Trevi Fountain. London is evocative of other eras and full of history.
Certainly, people like Gaga have introduced a new type of hat-wearing.
I do say I'm a specialist in divas. Name a diva - I've worked with 'em.
I used to make clothes for my sister's dolls. I couldn't care less for the dolls, but I could make the clothes really easily.
I love the shape of cars. They are very inspiring as modern pieces of machinery. I can't drive, but I do like the look of them.
A person carries off the hat. Hats are about emotion. It is all about how it makes you feel.
Hats are for life's ultimate moments. They're worn at races, at weddings. Occasions many of us, who aren't royals and celebrities, only attend once or twice in a lifetime. — © Philip Treacy
Hats are for life's ultimate moments. They're worn at races, at weddings. Occasions many of us, who aren't royals and celebrities, only attend once or twice in a lifetime.
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.
I grew up in a little village in the west of Ireland.
What I love most about Her Majesty is that she has kept hats alive in people's minds for more than 60 years. You can't think of her without imagining her with a hat or a crown. I would, of course, love to design one for her.
I grew up in the west of Ireland, and Galway was our local seaside resort. We'd go for one day of the year during the summer, and I have enduring memories of the sand and the sea.
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.
Elegance is all in the mind of the wearer.
Wearing a hat is fun; people have a good time when they're wearing a hat.
Everybody loves things that sparkle.
I was just, as a child, very different from the others, and didn't really care what they thought because you know, a child doesn't really have inhibitions; you sort of gain your inhibitions later.
People are dressing like stars, which is kind of fantastic. — © Philip Treacy
People are dressing like stars, which is kind of fantastic.
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.
Gaga is an entertainer, so a hat for her is part of the illusion of entertaining.
Every day, I like to make hats that make people dream.
I make hats for lots of iconic people, and that makes my job very interesting.
America brought us the baseball cap; it's one of my favorite hats.
At home, I had seven brothers, one sister. I sewed clothes for my sister's dolls although she was grown and gone away. I was a weirdo but didn't think I was a weirdo.
Not long ago, a hat was a conformist accessory. Then the 1960s came along, and young people didn't want to wear hats.
How a hat makes you feel is what a hat is all about.
I love the romance of what I do, although because of Isabella, Lady Gaga and Grace Jones, people think I have crazy customers. Sometimes I get more enthusiasm from the housewife who wants a hat and believes in it.
Hat-making is laborious and time-consuming. It's a very tactile medium, and you can develop the skills, but it's one of those things: you either have it, or you don't. I love bringing something to fruition with my hands that gives people pleasure.
Fantasy hats give you the possibility to dream.
I want to excite the eye through hatmaking.
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