Guest Author - Norma Shephard
It is no accident that I have devoted a segment in my book, 1,000 Hats, to the millinery genius of Philip Warde. It has been said of this mid-twentieth century hat designer that “no one could carry colors in his head like Philip could.”
Toronto milliner Philip Warde showed a natural talent for millinery from a young age. In an interview with the Toronto Star he tells of refashioning an expensive cartwheel chapeau, that his mother had paid “an arm and a leg for” into something he considered to be much smarter. “I begged her to let me take the hat apart,” said the designer, whose reworked creation caught the attention of an established downtown milliner. She invited the boy into her workroom and thus began his millinery apprenticeship.
Warde learned the basics in Toronto but when his aunt suggested he study in New York he bolted for the States and took instruction in interior design and millinery, completing a three year course in just eighteen months. “My funds were pretty low,” he confided to a reporter in 1953, hence the twenty-four hour swing shifts, which enabled him to finish the program in record time.
Warde’s hats speak for themselves. Vibrant in color, innovative in form, and pre-eminent in suitability, his felt, fur, straw, and fabric confections are as wearable today as they were in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Elizabeth Taylor counted among Warde’s many patrons, having purchased a yellow, daisy-bedecked headpiece for one of her weddings to actor Richard Burton. And Warde’s regular clients were known to purchase as many as thirty hats per year.
Amateur milliners were able to benefit from Warde’s expertise as well. A Toronto newspaper held a hat-making contest in the late forties and appointed Warde as adjudicator. He shared his design philosophy with contestants, advising them to work directly with their material. “Merely slapping a material on a buckram form is not creating,” he instructed, and encouraged entrants to allow their own creativity to emerge.
Photos of Warde show a handsome, dark-haired gentleman in heavy-rimmed glasses, looking not unlike a 1950s game-show host, but by all accounts Warde was a modest individual. “Philip was not given to bragging about his accomplishments,” explains long-time friend Ernie Paglietti.
Former client Joy Drew (a big fan) remembers Warde as a creative designer and cordial host. She visited his home studio often, following the closure of Warde’s Bloor St. Salon c.1970. “Philip was a gracious, marvelous host,” says Drew. “He served me elegant lunches on beautiful serving pieces and I never came away without buying a hat.”
The Mobile Millinery Museum & Costume Archive is home to many of Warde’s finished and unfinished pieces as well as his original hat patterns, hat blocks, and mannequin heads. Over 35 of Warde’s magnificent millinery creations along with notations on their workmanship and value can be found in my book, 1,000 Hats.
