The fashion for wedding crowns & coronets started with my designs.

I made my first pieces with no intention of marketing them, simply, they were made to accessorise my wedding gown designs for a photo shoot. At the time the vogue for wedding head attire was for garlands of flowers (think  'Duck Face' in Four weddings & a Funeral) worn with a veil ~ a look that done right could look gorgeous with the right dress but not the look I envisaged with my designs. I was & am very much in to imagery reminiscent of fairytales & medieval, Elizabethan & 18th Century costume.

Tiaras had begun to penetrate the wedding market & there were some makers creating nice designs but they too didn't 'fit' with my design concept. I wanted photographs of Queens & Cinderella-esque Fairytale Princesses so I decided to design & make my own crowns & head-dresses for the shoot using variations on wire work techniques I had been messing around with since I had been at school. The resulting photographs got the attention of the wedding magazines, advertising staff would admire the crowns when I placed adverts & ask who had made them & when a member of the fashion team at You & Your Wedding Magazine saw my photographs, she too asked where the crowns had come from & if the magazine could call something in for a photo shoot? As 'crowns & coronets' were significantly different from floral wreaths & traditional tiaras & wedding magazines tend to shy away from 'too different', she asked if I could make a tiara?  Personally I have never particularly liked traditional tiara designs, there were already tiara makers who apparently did like this style & were supplying the magazines with pieces so I suggested a compromise ~ a half crown / tiara (the closest I was willing to stray into tiara territory at the time). The piece I made up for the magazine was my Baby Princess design which they apparently liked a lot, as a few months later it was gracing the magazine's cover on newsagents stands.

It was not until this conversation that I had given any thought to the commercial potential of my head-dress creations- they were very different to the tiaras & floral garlands which were the fashionable wedding head-dresses of choice & I had a hard enough time getting magazines to take my corseted wedding gowns for shoots because they too were 'too different' & didn't look like seven other designer's dresses to feature in photo shoot line ups. However I decided it was worth exploring the idea further, I built up the collection with some new designs & did the grand tour of the wedding magazines & at each magazine the collection was met with similar enthusiasm. Fashion Editors practically snatched them out of my hands & I even had to say 'no' to lending certain pieces because other magazines wanted them for photo shoots at the same time. I was surprised by the response but realise now that the difference between accessories & dresses is that where my wedding gowns can be too much of a statement for some people, my accessory designs are just enough of a statement.

As you can imagine, the designs have had much publicity over the years & are regularly featured in the fashion pages & on the covers of bridal pulications.

A selection of covers & editorial.

THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE DESIGNS :

My designs are influenced by my love of Gothic architecture (GAUDI is my favourite architect & I have a piece named after him), wrought iron work, corsets, art nouveau & the Rococo period, mixed with a good dose of myth, magic & fairytale ~ the pieces all have a structure & precision to them combined with delicacy, softness & curves. Inevitably there is also a cross over from my gown work & interest in other forms of art & crafts, so new crystals, beads, techniques, etc. from these other fields can easily end up worked into or influencing new accessory designs.  

My bridal gown designs are still the spring board behind many of the more elaborate pieces I create for my accessory collection, for instance I will be making a new sample gown called Papillion in pink silk & have made a beautiful crystal butterfly comb to accessorise it.

To view the Chantal Mallett Bridal Gown web site, click here .

Other pieces are inspired by new materials I discover or a new technique or idea that comes to mind & some pieces come about by accident. For example my Fauna Crown which was originally going to be a four leaf crown inspired by Aurora but did not look right & as a result the design was reconsidered & inspired by the unusual base structure, I created Fauna, an organic design that grows from the base into pretty foliage & twig motifs.

Aurora Crown, original Fauna design idea, Fauna Crown.

I have also embraced the concept of tiaras / half crowns a little more but refuse to get too traditional & crowns / coronets still form the largest portion of my collection. I also make Spanish style combs, designs based on alice bands (though, again, I steer clear of traditional alice band designs ~ possibly because I had to wear an alice band as part of my school uniform) & other forms of head-dresses as well as Venetian style masks, chokers, etc.

MORE ABOUT THE PIECES THEMSELVES :

Spun from different gauges of wire, pearls, glass beads & crystals like a spider's web, I personally hand make each piece to order & modify the colours, beads & designs, where required, to perfectly compliment the client's gown design. My experience making wedding gowns, styling my photographs from head to toe & ability to dress hair puts me in a unique position to really be able to advise my accessory clients on which pieces & hairstyles will both suit them the best & work with their dress designs & colour/design themes.

The influence of my wedding gown work also extends to the way I make my pieces & the concept behind them. Designing wedding gowns is very creative but making wedding gowns involves a completely different set of skills (skills in part inherited from my Father who is an Engineer) ~ you have to be able to translate your idea into a pattern, get the balance & proportions just right & when making corsets a great deal of discipline is required. When I began making those first crowns, these skills put me in good stead. When I make up a new crown design for example I know how I intend the hair to be worn & the style dress the pieces would compliment & this enables me to work out the best dimensions which I then make up as a frame to exact measurements with the same precision & build concept that I have learned from making corsets, in fact you can see the influence of corsets in my designs as the frames are all reminiscent of a corset's framework: 

As with my bridal gowns, the quality & care I take in making each piece is second to none & shows in the finish. My clash of engineering & creativity skills also means everything I make not only looks good but works (the best designs are always a marriage of looks & function) ~ though they may look fragile & delicate the structure gives each piece strength & my pieces will survive the odd knock or being dropped (it's always fun to see the look of horror on a clients face when they accidentally drop a head-dress & imagine they've just ruined it).

COMPETITION:

There are cheaper copies & hybrids of my head-dress & mask designs around & plenty of  makers only too willing to cash in on the success of my designs but with all these copies the emphasis is on making a copy & making it quick. The results never capture the magic of my pieces & are often so badly made, not only are they wobbly & uneven but you could also crush them in your hand. Also, & this both amuses & irritates me beyond belief, when you see these pieces on stands at wedding shows the width to height proportions are always so wrong & when I have a little fun on these stands & fain interest, popping them on my head, pilling my hair up behind them, I inevitably get the same response "oh, that looks good, I never thought of them being worn like that" & it takes me all my self control not to say "Doh! Of course you didn't because you didn't design it did you?!", I will also be invited to send them a pictures of the crown I want them to make, if they do not have anything that is 'quite right', real designers don't do that. I've even had a bride come on to my stand at a show & tell me they admire my crowns but that they don't suit them & with my stand model starring at me with a look of horror on her face, I replied "Well, that's because you've been trying on copies of my crowns, you haven't tried mine" (designers voicing their irritation with breaches of 'copyright' for some reason is a big no no but to my mind, I respect other designer's work, I don't copy & I expect the same courtesy & too many of these companies are all about making a quick buck). Two minutes later, with her hair pulled up to suit her face & the right crown on, it was a totally different story & a few weeks later a £300 order & that's really the difference, with many makers they just do not have the design skills, the make up skills, the desire to create a beautiful object or willingness to put in the hours  ~ my accessories are my original designs, a crown averages 10 hours to make, some 18+ hours & it shows in the quality & service I provide. They may be much imitated but these designs are without equal & remain the best in the market & a future heirloom to every bride who owns one.

There are few head-dress companies creating original works that rival my own in terms of quality & design, I would however recommend Slim Barrett, who made Victoria Beckam's wedding crown, if my designs are not to your taste.

LINKS:

Slim Barrett