In for a Shilling

I was delighted to meet David Shilling - the 'Mad Hatter' - last night. 

Like me, he's a member of the Eccentric Club (see here) and he usually lives in Monaco. Or on a yacht somewhere. But he's over in the UK for a while and invited me and several of our fellow eccentrics for cocktails at his London pied-à-terre.

David is a milliner and fashion designer who is, perhaps, best known for the extraordinary outfits he designed for his late mother Gertrude Shilling - known affectionately as the 'Mascot of Ascot'.

David was only 12 when he designed his first hat for Gertrude to wear to the races. By the age of 13 he was creating scarves and accessories to sell to major British retailers such as Fenwick, Fortnum & Mason, and Liberty. He opened his first store in Marylebone High Street in 1976 when he was 27 and was soon supplying bespoke hats to the rich and the famous. His first collection was purchased in America by Bloomingdale's and other stores began selling his creations soon afterwards. In the late 1970s Bergdorf Goodman charged up to $3,000 for a David Shilling hat.

In 1988, he was invited by the USSR to show his hats during the first Miss USSR pageant in Moscow -  the first ever live Russian TV broadcast. And, in 1990, he headed a successful mission for the United Nations in Ecuador which led to other projects as an art and design ambassador with the UN in Africa and Asia. Shilling eventually stopped wholesale hat-making and moved to producing only made-to-order garments. 

He's also very well known for his involvement in the branding of 1990's 'Cool Britannia' and he designed the emblem for Britain's Festival of Arts and Culture in 1994. He's also designed costumes and scenery for theatre, opera, ballet, film and TV and formed an exhibition at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 1998. In 2007 he displayed the first of an expected ten collections of hats (each priced at £1,000,000) at Top Marques Monaco.

His work encompasses all areas of art, fashion and design, outdoor sculpture, jewellery, men's and ladies' bespoke clothing, accessories, home furnishings, theatre, ballet, opera and interior design. In 2010, a hat he created in the 1970s that was studded with diamonds was acknowledged by Guinness World Records as the most expensive hat in the world in the 21st century. He's also worked with many charities, including Consortium for Street Children for whom he designed their logo and helped organise their launch at 10 Downing Street, World Horse Welfare and the Darwin Centre, Natural History Museum, London. He is a patron of Action on Addiction and created a millinery course for HM Prison, The Mount.

In 2019, he applied to join a ten-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in a mixed crew of professional and privately funded astronauts. I asked him how that's going and he told me that Covid had delayed things but he's still planning to go and is hoping to start his astronaut training sometime later this year.

Watch this space - literally.

Meanwhile, his artworks can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, The Louvre's Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Government Art Collection, and the Holdenby House Steel Sculptures collection (Northampton, England).

I'd love to show you photos from last night and the flamboyant interior of his house but, having had a couple of burglaries in recent years., he is naturally cagey about showing off where he lives - and I'm happy to respect his wishes.

We parted as new friends, exchanged phone numbers and we'll keep in touch.