An Interview with Justin Smith
Justin Smith is a renowned milliner whose passion for art and craftsmanship has propelled him to the forefront of the millinery world. His journey in millinery began as a fascination, eventually evolving into a lifelong pursuit of excellence. With meticulous attention to detail and a keen eye for style, each of Justin's creations tells a story, reflecting his unique vision and commitment to artistic expression. His work has graced the silver screen in numerous blockbuster films from Maleficent to Cruella, hit period dramas from The Gilded Age to The Great, and the fashion bible – Vogue. Justin continues to redefine the boundaries of millinery, leaving an indelible mark on the world of fashion, film, and tv.
I had the pleasure to sit down with Justin. Keep reading to discover more about him.
Justin Smith, milliner
RC: What fascinates you most about millinery?
JS: I approached it from a slightly unusual perspective because I started out with a background in hairdressing, and then I transitioned into hat making. For me, millinery is incredibly artistic and highly creative, akin to wearable sculpture. That's how I perceive it. I truly enjoy utilizing various materials and appreciate the fact that they don't require washing machines; once made, they remain stable indefinitely. They take on a life of their own, sometimes completely altering someone's character when worn. Occasionally, I create pieces specifically tailored to someone's persona, which then becomes an integral part of them. I love every aspect of this craft for its inventiveness, innovation, and versatility, spanning from art and sculpture to ready-to-wear, encompassing both menswear and womenswear. It's a wonderfully expressive and artistic endeavor.
RC: You were at Toni and Guy before, and then you had your salon. What was the transition like from hairdressing to creating headpieces?
JS: Weird.
I'm currently reflecting on my career because I'm revisiting the past 20 years of building my brand. As I look back, it all starts to make sense to me. I've come full circle now, finding myself deeply involved in hairdressing once again. Initially, my journey wasn't about venturing into the hat industry or being enamored with headwear; it began with my background in hairdressing. I reached the pinnacle of my career, delving into avant-garde shows where I sculpted hair into diverse shapes, conceived concepts, and curated collections showcased worldwide. It was through this avenue that millinery entered my life. Attending a millinery course enabled me to understand how to balance and proportion headpieces better for the avant-garde creations I was envisioning. As I experimented with different fabrics, drawing from my lifelong experience of crafting clothes and hats for myself, I realized that my skills in hairdressing seamlessly translated into millinery. What started as a mere hobby soon spiraled into an all-consuming passion. And here I am, two decades later, still feeling like it's a hobby that's taken on a life of its own.
RC: That’s amazing.
JS: It's an organic kind of creative transition. I feel much more like an artist who works with the medium of hair, fabrics, or whatever I'm using at the time, like costume. And then I'm constantly evolving, learning new things, and transitioning. It's great for creativity because it keeps on going round. Now that I've just finished a course in hair and makeup for film and TV, I've come full circle and learned a lot of skills in the last few months that I didn't learn when I was doing all the hairdressing before. I've been a hairdresser for these 20 years as well, so I feel hairdressing informs everything, and I’m still a hairdresser deep down at heart, playing with all different types of mediums, and I call them hats. It's very cool with the intention to run a business, and I'm constantly slipping and sliding on the edge of understanding how to even make that work.
RC: I read that your grandmother was a milliner, and another one was an embroiderer. Did that influence your work, and is your family also very artistic?
JS: I would say that my family is artistic, yeah, absolutely. Both my brothers have creative jobs to a certain extent. One's a mechanic, but he builds cars, so he's kind of a magician. And then the other one sculpts with Legos, so we're all kind of sculptors. Creativity was nurtured in us when we were younger. My grandmother, who I grew up with and spent a lot of time with, was the embroiderer. She did embroidery, so when I was growing up, I always wanted kits to make things, like candles or little sculptures of gnomes to put in the garden, that kind of stuff. She always embraced my creativity, helping to nourish and grow it. It was like a muscle that I felt was always expanding. My great-grandmother was the milliner. I knew her, but not very well, and she passed away before I became a milliner. I have a few of her tools left, but I've heard stories of where she worked and the shop that she ran in my hometown. It feels like it's in my heritage, although I didn't see her actual millinery work. It's a shame that we didn't have cameras back then to capture all of that. My grandmother used to tell me stories about the war - she would be given a hat from her mum and then bike around town to deliver them. There was always this story of what she did when she was a little girl.
RC: What was the first hat you ever made?
JS: It's difficult because I started doing sculpture, and it's kind of like making a hat. I would make things to put on my head that I would wear out to clubs and such. The first hat I ever made was a military-style one, but I had no sewing skills, so it was a bit dodgy. I also made a red beret that I wore for many years before I started making hats. I always used to collect hats and wear vintage ones at school. I was always inspired by buying vintage pieces and upcycling or remaking them, taking them apart, understanding how they were made, and remaking them. It was always just something that was part of my artistic history.
RC: When you make bespoke pieces, do you use a lot of vintage materials as well?
JS: I use loads of vintage. Most of the fabrics that I use are either vintage, deadstock, or old pieces that I take apart and reuse. I try to incorporate pretty much all old materials into my work rather than new ones. And I've always done that just because I like the age and the quality of these things. I don't feel like you can get the same quality of stuff now as you used to get back then when all the old pieces were made. I always think, well, if you can give something a new lease on life, then it's fantastic, and it brings a completely different quality to your work. I do try as much as possible to use as much of that as I can. Even if it's deadstock fabric for a flat cap, I will always try to line it.
RC: What’s the most challenging piece that you’ve worked on?
JS: With every job, there comes a challenge. And as I've always said, I'm on an organic path to learn and grow.
There have been a couple of major films that really pushed the extent of my creativity to the max, and that would include working with Angelina on Maleficent. There was a lot of development upfront; it was the iconic thing for the whole movie. She had worked with quite a few people before and wasn't finding what she wanted, so the pressure was real. But once you establish something and understand it, it becomes a bit easier, and then you start to play with the minute details of everything. That was a bit of a baptism of fire because I hadn't worked that intensely in film before. But with every film, it's a different thing, like with The Gilded Age hats. There's a lot of background research, trying to keep everything authentic while adding a touch of something modern to bring it into the present day.
It feels like every hat is a technical challenge for most of us who make inventive, sculptural things.
A couple of years ago, I made a piece for the Marvel film Captain Marvel, which is on my Instagram. It's like a jellyfish that you wear on your head. That was technically very challenging because you must try and deconstruct it. Even though it looks like a hat and must be worn like one, it also needs to be light enough to function and perform on stage in a film environment. That was certainly challenging because it went through quite a lot of permutations, requiring a lot of development, taking it apart, and putting it back together.
That's the part that I love. And if I'm not getting those kinds of jobs all the time, then I'm always looking for that in my own personal work. In a way, it's more like I challenge myself for everything to constantly be the next challenge.
The most complicated work that I do is my own sculptural work because I build sculptural pieces that are a life cast of myself based on millinery techniques that I use. And those ones are the most complicated because I'm always developing that in my head and trying to understand how to push techniques and boundaries with those pieces. And they can inform jobs, and people can see the extent of my creativity.
RC: For pieces like the Marvel jellyfish hat that you've made, I think the phrase was "one is none." Do you have to recreate those multiple times as well?
JS: When you make one, you should always be prepared to make more. I always create photo diaries of everything I make from beginning to end, even if it's just a sample. That certainly helps me remember how I made it, but usually in film, it depends. You can make one and get away with it; it really depends on what it's being used for and how complicated it is to make in the first place. But usually, I will make a couple side by side. If I'm making one, I'll develop two. And then if I have to take it apart and change it and mold it into something different, I'll constantly work on both side by side because then I always have a secondary one to reference if I need to make more multiples. But these days in film, sometimes you just don't have the time. Sometimes it's so expensive to make that making two doesn't really warrant it for the time it's on screen. Sometimes they need multiples. Sometimes you need 20 of them. It really does depend on the job itself, the scale of the job, and who you're working with.
Justin Smith, owner of JSmith ESQr
RC: Do you have a favorite memory while working on a film?
JS: I love working with Angelina a lot, and I continue to admire her greatly. My memories of working with her are always exciting because it pushes the boundaries of my creativity. It's amazing to be given the opportunity to help with a team of people to create a character that's so iconic. I guess that is, of course, probably the thing that people will remember me for, but also the jobs that I love because they're super high-pressure and they take over your life at the time you're doing it.
Sometimes it's just the small little jobs where you work with a team of people, and they're all just gorgeous. And it ends up being a film that nobody ends up seeing. But you still have a beautiful time. With every film, there's a different team of people, and that always creates an environment that creates lovely memories. I love the team that I work with on The Gilded Age. They're just adorable. Every single hat that I make for them is always a zoom call and a development and completely creatively inspired by each other. So that's a completely different kind of vibe in a way.
Each job mostly creates good memories, and you do have some bad ones. When you enjoy doing what you're doing and you're pushing the boundaries, even the stress is enjoyable if it's not long term and things always go towards a good end goal.
RC: Is there anything that you want to be particularly remembered for? What do you want people to remember about your art?
JS: I'm always trying to make sure that I am a bit of the artist of the millinery world. I don't feel like I fit into the millinery world in the sense that I don't make classic occasion wear. It's always trying to be inventive and understand that it isn't millinery as much as it is art pieces that you wear that create characters. Ideally, it would be nice if quite a lot of my work were remembered.
I'm constantly trying to keep pushing my career as a whole forward and doing new things. And I'm trying to do an exhibition of my work, a 20-year retrospective, in October. That’s looking back retrospectively but also analyzing to see what I haven't done. And there's so much I haven't done that there's so much great potential for. I only feel like I've just started.
We'll see when I get to the end, let's see what becomes the most recognized thing, because there's so many things I loved. All the work that I did in fashion, I worked with Moschino. We did a beautiful collection of hats. Some of those are still the most gorgeous hats that a lot of people in fashion remember. It depends on where you're coming from and what you love. And some people love a classic flat cap, and that's beautiful, or a classic felt hat. And that's just as gorgeous as some of the super extreme stuff.
But hopefully, I've still got more left in me, so we'll see.
RC: Do you have a muse or things that you're generally inspired by as well?
JS: I love working with all human beings. It’s fantastic to make art that you kind of wear and it does go out there into the world and have its own kind of life force or live in somebody's wardrobe, live in somebody's mantelpiece. It's nice to be able to do these things that people engage with. There are many people I would love to work with, but the list is endless. Quite a lot of them are dead.
My own creativity is my own muse, which sounds a bit egoistic, but it's not, and I hope it doesn't come across in that way. It's more like growing, and I teach a lot. That's a massive part of it. Every time I teach, I learn more from my students about myself and hopefully I'm giving something back to the students. It’s more like a creative dialog. That's the most important thing for me.
RC: Where do you teach?
JS: I teach in various places. I get invited to do things, but I'm teaching in about a month's time in an academy in Italy, the National Talent Support. I'm going there for a residency for a week and doing a talk.
It ebbs and flows. I guest lecture in different places. It’s free flowing because with the film industry, you’re never quite sure what you're doing on a month-to-month basis.
RC: Do you have a film or show that you can watch again and again?
JS: There are a few things that I turn to. My go-to happy place that really makes me laugh - Grace and Frankie is one of my favorite programs in the world. I'd love to work with Jane Fonda or Lily Tomlin if we're naming names; they are both adorable creatures. It's my go-to TV program for about half an hour of just getting out of it. I try not to overanalyze things I see on screen. When I'm involved in watching something, I take a step back and just enjoy it for what it is. Otherwise, I'd be constantly in work mode. I love music because I'm so visual; I listen to a lot more music than I watch things. It's easier for me to be creative and hang out in my own space with just the sound.
RC: What kind of music do you like to listen to while you work?
JS: As for the music I listen to, it's quite diverse. I grew up with loads of pop music since there was no family influence on me until I was about 16. As soon as I got into music, it was all about the charts and pop, everyone current at that time. I'm still a big pop fan. I also like a lot of electronic music, as well as various other genres like rock. It depends on my emotions, mood, and what I'm making at the time. Sometimes I want something really tranquil in the background, so I listen to meditation or esoteric music. Other times, I want a good belting of Miley Cyrus.
RC: I have a few rapid-fire questions.
JS: Chuck it at me.
RC: A night out or a night in?
JS: Regarding whether I prefer a night out or a night in, it's definitely a night in now, but it was always a night out. I've shifted to preferring nights in over the last ten years.
RC: Would you rather travel to the past or to the future?
JS: As for traveling to the past or the future, I'd choose the future. I'm intrigued to know what happens beyond my years. Going back to classic times might be interesting too, but it's the future that excites me the most because of my fascination with sci-fi.
RC: Movie or TV show?
JS: Regarding movies or TV shows, it's a bit of both for me. Sometimes, a limited series can feel like a movie, and I love the addictive quality of watching something like Queen's Gambit, which was impeccably well done and designed.
RC: Lastly, what’s your sign?
JS: My star sign is Libra, and yes, I do believe in astrology and other esoteric practices. They've helped me manifest my creativity and connect with otherworldly