How to commission a hat, from first email to final fitting
How do you commission a hat? You send the occasion, the date and a photograph of the outfit. The milliner proposes a shape and matches the colour by hand against a cutting of your fabric. The base is blocked to your head measurement, you see it at a fitting in person or on a video call, and it is trimmed and finished after that. One to four weeks for a design that already exists, longer if the shape is being created from nothing.
Most people have never done this and expect it to be more formal than it is. It is a conversation, and the milliner is doing most of the work of deciding.
Stage one: the first conversation
You write, or you come in. What is genuinely useful at this point:
The date. This determines everything about what is possible, so lead with it. The occasion. Ascot, a wedding, mother of the bride, a christening. Each has different conventions and some have rules. A photograph of the outfit, even on a hanger, even a screenshot from a shop listing. What you have worn before that worked, or did not. More useful than any description of what you want.
What is not needed yet: a fixed idea of the shape. If you have one, say it, and expect it to be discussed. Part of what you are paying for is someone who fits hats to faces all day telling you when a shape will not do what you hope.
There is no fee for this conversation here.
Stage two: shape and colour
The milliner proposes one or two shapes and a scale. This is where proportion is settled: how wide the brim can be for your height, how the crown sits against your hairline, which side it should be worn on.
Then the colour. The reliable way is a cutting of the actual outfit fabric, judged in daylight. A photograph works, a screen colour does not, because screens lie in both directions. If your outfit is not made yet, this stage waits, which is why mother of the bride commissions usually start once the dress fabric exists.
Stage three: your head measurement, and blocking
Your measurement is taken with a soft tape one centimetre above the ears and level across the forehead, over the hair you plan to wear on the day. That last part matters more than people expect. A hairstyle can change the fitting by a centimetre.
The base is then blocked. Straw or felt is steamed, pulled over the wooden block, pinned and left to dry, which takes a day or more. This is the stage where the hat becomes a shape.
Stage four: the fitting
You see the blocked base before it is trimmed, either at the atelier or held up on a video call. This is the moment to change your mind about angle, scale and how far forward it sits. Changes here are straightforward. Changes after trimming are not.
Bring the outfit if you can, or at least the shoes, because height changes proportion.
Stage five: trimming and finishing
Bows are shaped, veiling is cut and set, flowers are made, crystals are applied. The interior petersham is stitched in and the lining set. Then it is boxed.
This is the slowest visible stage and the one that cannot be rushed, because hand-sculpted trim is simply hours.
How long it all takes
A design that already exists, remade in your colour. One to four weeks. A new shape designed from nothing. Longer, and it depends on the piece and the season. March to June. Add time. Every milliner in London is at capacity for Ascot and the wedding season.
What can be changed, and when
Freely, up to blocking. Shape, scale, colour, which side it sits on. At the fitting. Angle, position, how far forward it sits, small changes of proportion. After trimming. Very little without rebuilding, which is why the fitting matters.
Afterwards
A hand-blocked hat is not finished business. It can be brought back to be re-blocked into another shape, retrimmed or recoloured, which is how one commission becomes three hats over fifteen years. Say so when you commission, and the piece can be built with that in mind.
Starting one
Write with the date, the occasion and a photograph of the outfit. That is enough to begin. Everything else is decided in conversation, and the first one costs nothing.
