4:41pm Wednesday 8th March 2006
By Jeremy Campbell
Jane Fryers is a milliner who makes hats out of old clothes and even fish scales. She talks to Jeremy Campbell.
Jane Fryers is a freelance continuity person who works on advertising productions by day, but her hobby is quickly taking over.
Having studied millinery with the Queen Mother's hatmaker, she now designs and makes bespoke hats nearly all from recycled materials.
Jane grew up in Beaconsfield, but now lives in London, where she sells her hats through Junkie in Brick Lane. She also makes them to order, and uses an array of unusual materials and quirky designs which make her hats so distinctive. She was recently awarded a scholarship through QEST. The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship fund makes awards to committed craft men and women for study, training and work experience.
Jane has also been recognised as one of the country's best hat designers, as she was a finalist in the Hat Designer of the Year in 2004. She started from reasonably humble beginnings.
"I started at London College of Fashion on Saturday mornings. I saw an advertisement for silver jewellery making, beadwork and millinery, and I thought I would do a term of each, but I never got past the millinery. Then I then met Rose Cory, the Queen Mother's milliner, and began training with her."
The techniques she has learned are universal, but she has applied them in some interesting and challenging ways.
"The hats are made on wooden blocks. At first, you are taught how to stretch the felt over the blocks, and that is the basic principle. You soak the material then pull it over the block. You can use any material. Man-made materials are better, as they have the best weave," she says.
It is both her unusual designs and the materials she chooses which make her hats so unique. The decision to use recycled materials seemed to come naturally.
"I went to Junkie to buy a skirt and a coat to go to a christening, and the coat and skirt were made out of men's suits, all chopped up in different ways. At the bottom of the skirt was man's a waistcoat upside down which resembled a fish-tail. I thought it was amazing, so I made a hat to go with it a tiny trilby with the big quill on it.
Then I started making more hats. I made the stetson out of jeans, and then began selling them.
I sold the second hat I made to my sister-in-law to go to a wedding, and then people started asking me straight away to make more. So I would run back to college and say how do you do that'.
"At the moment I am making a full size stetson for a Texan girl, out of a pair of Wranglers. It's taken me ages because you have to let it dry at various stages."
And where have the latest materials come from?
"Who's jeans are they? Trade secret, they might come after me. There are a few people who don't know where their clothes have gone," she laughs.
Some of the materials are harder to come by, like that for the woman's black stetson, made from fish skin.
"I saw in a newspaper, that a girl had made a bikini out of fish leather (fish skin). So I got in touch with her and she gave me a few samples. It is really nice to work with, it is very soft, just like a fabric. Then I thought I would take it a step further, and use the scales as decoration. So I went to the local fishmonger and asked for some fish scales. So he literally got a fish and scraped the scales off for me. So I have pots of fish scales that I use instead of sequins. They are beautiful."
Jane went to St Mary's Primary School, then Beaconsfield High School.
She often returns to the area as her parents still live in south Bucks. She says she sees friends from both schools regularly. They meet up at least once every year, and she says it is always particularly enjoyable, even if it is only an annual meeting.
"When you grow up here, the friends you make are really solid. Even though they are all round the country, I still see them."
For more information on Jane Fryers work to to: www.janefryers.com
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