An insider's guide to your favourite fashion brands
How it began:
Philip Treacy was born in County Galway, Ireland, in 1967 and grew up near the village church where he would watch weddings, which he later described as 'fashion shows'. At the age of five he began sewing, creating dresses and hats for his sister's dolls.
In 1985, Treacy moved to Dublin to study fashion at the National College of Art & Design. He started creating hats to match his clothing designs and eventually decided to spend six weeks as an apprentice with milliner Stephen Jones.
In 1989, he brought one of his hats to Michael Roberts, then fashion director of Tatler, and his style editor, Isabella Blow. A few weeks later, Blow commissioned him to make a hat for her wedding. Instead of using traditional materials such as tulle, veiling and pearls, Treacy stiffened lace into the shape of a medieval headdress. This marked the beginning of a long creative collaboration.
He met Karl Lagerfeld in 1991 and began a 10-year collaboration with Chanel, designing hats such as a twisted birdcage, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier and worn on the cover of British Vogue by Linda Evangelista. In 1991, Treacy won his first British Fashion Council award as British accessory designer of the year.
