You could say that design runs in Sicilian-born milliner Roberta Cucuzza's blood. The bespoke hatmaker's great-grandmother, Maria Bellini, a Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli contemporary, opened a fashion atelier in Catania in the 1920s and passed her passion onto her family.
Roberta has fond memories of sewing with her grandmother, which serve as touchstones on her career path. The London-based designer takes hat commissions as she works toward an HNC in Textiles/Millinery at Morley College in Chelsea, London, the only professional millinery course available in the UK.
I recently had the opportunity to connect with Roberta, who shared more about her background and inspiration, her journey to her first commission in 2019, her award-winning hat, and her plans for the future.
Tell us about your background and what led you to millinery.
My fashion heritage goes about three generations back to my great-grandmother. She had a good life and a really nice marriage. For those days in 1920s Sicily, she was very independent and got a lot of support from her husband to pursue her goal of running a fashion business. Unfortunately, her husband passed away when he was 50 when she was still relatively young, so she found herself raising six kids on her own through her work as a tailor. There's a story of survival that goes with her craft.
She was a tailor and a fashion designer who attended a professional school in Italy. When she was still with my great-grandfather, they traveled to Paris together, embarking on a 2,000-kilometer journey by steam train! In those days, it wasn't an easy trip. They went there in the twenties when Schiaparelli and Chanel would probably have been showing their work. She came back excited and brought lots of nice materials back with her. Her business grew because of this trip and gradually attracted clients from the Sicilian nobility. Her business really thrived. She had a 17-room atelier in central Catania.
She was really infectious in terms of passing on her passion to her daughters. I spent my childhood sewing things with my grandmother Isabella, which is where everything started for me. However, it wasn't until many years later that I encountered millinery. My great-grandmother would not have made hats because they had what we call a modista, a milliner who would do that. But my dad has a big passion for hats, and the two things eventually came together.
My first encounter with hats was in 2015 when I attended a workshop in London. London is more open-minded when it comes to hats, while Italy is quite traditional. I just fell in love with millinery at first sight.
What memories do you have of sewing with your grandmother?
We celebrate Carnevale in Italy, and the family made all of my Carnevale dresses from scratch. My grandmother and aunt made this princess dress from a beautifully embroidered taffeta material that I think came from Morocco. I remember so clearly sitting on a chair for them to do the hem. They even made a matching headband to go with the dress.
Lots of love came with this craft. My early memories involve spending time with my loved ones, holding a needle, and making little purses or projects that my grandmother would give me.
The one thing I'm a bit upset with my grandmother about is that she never wanted to teach me how to use the sewing machine because she was scared I would hurt my fingers. It's something I had to pick up later on. Only recently have I overcome that deep fear. It would have saved me so much time, though, if I had learned it from her!
In millinery, you do a lot of hand sewing, and it came naturally to me to focus more on invisible stitching and all the things you do by hand. Eventually I wanted to be able to also create pattern-based hats that involve using a sewing machine. I mastered this in college only last year!
A couple of things really stayed with me. One is the quality of the materials my family was able to find in Italy to make clothes, and the other is their attention to detail. There's an emotion that goes into what you're making; it's not just a piece of fabric that goes through a machine.
Describe your journey from training to your first commission.
After some years of playing around just for pleasure, I started training professionally in 2019 through workshops and courses available in London. Then, I was approached by a burlesque performer called Olive TuPartie in New York via Instagram. She trusted me one hundred percent. It was one of those things that just happened, and I couldn't believe it because she was (and still is) the dream customer.
Because she's called Olive, she asked me to make something that resembled an olive with a skewer and a pimento. We collaborated online, and it was interesting that I could do my first commission across the ocean, basically without doing a fitting. But I spend a lot of time really understanding the customer and paying attention, putting some thought into what I'm doing at the same time.
My training was not formal, but I attended workshops with renowned milliners. In London, they organized London Hat Week; they invited milliners from abroad to come and teach, and I was lucky to study with people all the way from Australia and Israel. So, the two things coincided.
Tell us about your award-winning Riccio hat, its inspiration, and how you created it.
This project was very close to my heart for many reasons. My mom passed away a couple of years ago, and I didn't realize until later how much of that was part of this project.
It all came about when our teacher took us to a cemetery just to get some inspiration. There were corbezzolo trees there. I picked up this berry, and I was just attracted by the idea of something that's spiky outside with something precious inside. So, I started developing some mockups and prototypes and let this project take its course.
The sea urchin, riccio in Italian, uses this survival strategy. At the time, I felt a bit like a riccio because I was trying to protect myself and be strong outside.
The other key element of this design is crochet. My mom taught me to crochet when I was little. So when I made the structure of the sea urchin with millinery wire, I then covered it with crocheted felt, a technique I developed entirely on my own. To be honest, I didn't even know it was possible until I did this.
So lots of things came together: the fact that there's this kind of relationship that goes back to when I was a child. When I was designing it, it wasn't clear to me. I was just going with the design process and going from one thing to another. But when it came to writing my artist statement at the end, I realized all these elements from my Sicilian heritage were there. It's probably the project that is closest to my heart right now.
How do you balance traditional techniques with modern design elements in your work?
I think traditional techniques are there to help you. You have to know the rules to be able to break them. First, you have to learn the craft properly, and then you can go beyond and understand how you can innovate.
In a way, I am quite traditional. I am very curious about traditions, heritage, and old crafts. That's why crochet is one of the techniques that I'm trying to develop at the moment. I'm thinking of starting to crochet with materials that may not be so traditional—anything from metal and leather to foraged pieces of grass. I am still in that process, but a crucial part of my design language is the juxtaposition of contrasting elements: old and new, feminine and masculine, hard and soft. For example, I recently developed a feminine version of the Sicilian flat cap, made with luxurious materials that contrast with its traditional association with men in the Sicilian countryside.
What are your future plans?
This year, my focus is on finishing my last year in college, when we will present our final collection. I'm hoping that this will be my debut as a millinery designer-maker. I've already been gaining work experience with other milliners, and I intend to continue working freelance, producing a mixture of my own designs and creations for other people.
More recently, I've also been doing some work in theatrical millinery, a type of work that really appeals to me because it's more about solving a problem. Although I do like fashion and I like to create my own designs, I see myself l always doing a mixture of fashion and work for the stage.
I think it goes back to my first commission for Olive. That commission will probably be the one that will always stay with me; it sort of set the tone for me from the start. More recently, I have realized that what I like to do is help people realize their creative vision on and off the stage.
What do you hope people will take away from your work?
A smile? Happiness. That's the thing that hats do for people. You can go anywhere; if you wear a hat, you connect with others. People will probably ask about it. They'll be intrigued by your personality. What my hats do is create connections and generate happy memories. That's happened so many times.
Once, a lady came to me and said she had been told she couldn't wear hats because of her face. I said, "It's just like a haircut. You've just got to find the right one for you." Then she started wearing this hat that we looked at together, and a few days later, she sent me a thank-you card for helping her feel happy and confident in her own skin. That's what I'd like people to take away.
You can follow Roberta on Instagram @robertacucuzzamillinery and see her work on her website at robertacucuzza.com. Feel free to sign up to her mailing list to receive subscriber-only updates.
Robert Cucuzza's Riccio hat. Photo by Fenica Chambel
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