Imagining styles that highlight womankind: this is the philosophy of the head of hat creation for Maison Michel since 2006. The brand has existed since 1936, although few were in the know – Auguste Michel is to thank for the founding of this milliner. Since then, Chanel has taken over the manufacturer, bringing its savoir-faire in line with the 11 other arts and crafts workshops now managed by the house on the rue Cambon. This is exactly where Laetitia Crahay taps into her surreal universe to imagine her sensational but discrete headwear. The attractiveness of Maison Michel’s hats resides in this equation: they give an elegantly Parisian look as well as style to any silhouette, punctuating a woman’s sentence with a decidedly aristocratic comma. The fabrication process is almost identical to the one originally employed by Auguste Michel: it starts with a piece primed with acacia to give it a better hold, the felt becoming like modeling clay. Then, the milliner puts it on a steam dome to make it more supple and malleable. Extremely quickly and with an impressive dexterity, the hatter sculpts it into shape, made like a linden wood mold. A second steaming and then the hat is laid and stretched out to prepare the edges and discipline the cap section. The fabric will then be firmly blocked onto wood by a network of strings, maintained by a cane wicker, dampened on its velvet section, to finally get dressed into its final form.
In eight decades of existence, Maison Michel has brought together a repertoire of over 4,000 styles. So many hat styles that Laetitia Crahay is using them to obtain the perfect proportion for her headpieces. While Laetitia Crahay cherishes the brand’s legacy, she still maintains her distance from it to create. The proof is the Virginie, a perfect combination between this savoir-faire and her contemporary aspirations that is the brand’s icon what with its comma-shaped cap section initiated in 2007 by the milliner. The creativity of this designer who is also in charge of Chanel’s accessories brought her to compose the Virginie like a game of textures: made of rabbit felt and beaver, enveloped in leather or in hand-woven straw, the hat is either decorated with modest colors or brighter shades. It’s halfway between a trilby and a sunbonnet – its wide edges, falling lightly, enshroud the beauty who wears it in mystery as it becomes impossible to catch her gaze… The instigator of this enigmatic and supernatural aura is Virginie Viard, Karl Lagerfeld’s righthand woman for 30 years and a close friend of Laetitia Crahay.
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