Philip Treacy quotes:

The classic hat image was during the Forties and Fifties, and Elizabeth Taylor was the epitome of that; she was the ultimate celebrity of excess and glamour, and she worked major sun hats.

In Rome, I particularly love the history, churches, sculptures and architecture and the fact that you can walk along a tiny cobbled street and turn the corner to find the Trevi Fountain. London is evocative of other eras and full of history.

Hats are the epitome of Englishness, and a royal wedding is the penultimate moment for a hat designer. I'm Irish, but I am a royalist and I believe in fantasy.

I used to make clothes for my sister's dolls. I couldn't care less for the dolls, but I could make the clothes really easily.

I believe in originality, primarily. However, it's important to know what there has been before to aim in that direction. Art history informs us. It informs our mind. I like to look at books, exhibitions, paintings, as a computer, subconsciously taking on information.

Certainly, people like Gaga have introduced a new type of hat-wearing.

Women come into our shop for that ultimate moment in their life. They're buying a dream. They're buying a moment for themselves. That's what I sell - moments.

When you're wearing something on your head, you feel beautiful.

Shopping can be a nightmare - first finding something to wear and then finding something to go with it, it's so difficult when there's so much choice. It can feel like entering a battleground.

Hats are really for ultimate occasions, so when I make one, I try to do something different, something noticeable.

Hats are attached to special moments in people's lives - weddings, or the races. In difficult times, people still get married; they still want to look their best.

Hats are for life's ultimate moments. They're worn at races, at weddings. Occasions many of us, who aren't royals and celebrities, only attend once or twice in a lifetime.

Wearing a hat is fun; people have a good time when they're wearing a hat.

There's a technicality to designing and wearing hats. A hat is balancing the proportions of your face; it's like architecture or mathematics.

I always design the hat with the wearer in mind; otherwise, it's an inanimate object.

What I love most about Her Majesty is that she has kept hats alive in people's minds for more than 60 years. You can't think of her without imagining her with a hat or a crown. I would, of course, love to design one for her.

I grew up in a little village in the west of Ireland.

My mother had a sewing machine. I was never allowed to use it, but I was so fascinated by this little needle going up and down joining fabric together that I'd use it when my mother went out to feed the chickens.

Try on 100 different hats if you can, until you find the one that suits you best. It's a trial and error thing.

When people come and visit me and have a hat made, it's a little bit like visiting a psychiatrist, but they don't actually realize that.

My aim is to change people's perceptions of what a hat can look like in the 21st century.

Every day, I like to make hats that make people dream.

Gaga is an entertainer, so a hat for her is part of the illusion of entertaining.

I was just, as a child, very different from the others, and didn't really care what they thought because you know, a child doesn't really have inhibitions; you sort of gain your inhibitions later.

I remember in the early nineties people saying the hat was just for old women, but that's ridiculous.

The success of a hat definitely lies with balancing the personality of the wearer with the type of occasion. Don't listen to those rules about face shape.

America brought us the baseball cap; it's one of my favorite hats.

People, when they buy a hat, they can't explain why they want to buy it or why they want it, but they do. It's like chocolate.

I think and hope I have changed the way we look at hats. They are no longer symbols of conformity but highly individual acts of rebellion. I am constantly challenging the perception of what a hat should be and what role it should play.

So my advice is to always choose something simpler - an expressive outfit, plus a hat, can be frightening.

In a world where every man and his dog is a designer, Alexander McQueen was the real deal. His talent was supersonic.

Everybody loves things that sparkle.

I love the shape of cars. They are very inspiring as modern pieces of machinery. I can't drive, but I do like the look of them.

Not long ago, a hat was a conformist accessory. Then the 1960s came along, and young people didn't want to wear hats.

Royalty is completely different than celebrity. Royalty has a magic all its own.

I must point out - Sarah Jessica Parker is not a diva - she's one of these pop culture characters that everybody likes.

Hat-making is laborious and time-consuming. It's a very tactile medium, and you can develop the skills, but it's one of those things: you either have it, or you don't. I love bringing something to fruition with my hands that gives people pleasure.

When people think of hats, they think of her majesty the queen.

I empathise with the fact that people want to look their best. A hat is all about how it makes you feel - it's so much better than a nip and tuck, and a lot less painful.

At home, I had seven brothers, one sister. I sewed clothes for my sister's dolls although she was grown and gone away. I was a weirdo but didn't think I was a weirdo.

When you meet someone, you meet their face. It's the most potent part of the body to embellish.

How a hat makes you feel is what a hat is all about.

A person carries off the hat. Hats are about emotion. It is all about how it makes you feel.

Hats are radical; only people that wear hats understand that.

Often, what makes my job so exciting is designing for the mother whose dream has been to wear one of my hats at her child's wedding. I feel as responsible for making her feel like a million dollars as I do for somebody in the public eye.

People are dressing like stars, which is kind of fantastic.

The only person I never made a hat for was my mother because my mother didn't really - she preferred to make her own hats. I mean, she was intrigued by everything, but she didn't want one of my hats. She made her own.

Fantasy hats give you the possibility to dream.

Fashion is an illusion. It's a multibillion-pound industry that has to appear frivolous. Designers work and work and work, all night sometimes.

Hats make people feel good, and that's the point of them.

I believe that I am a hat designer, not a milliner.

I do say I'm a specialist in divas. Name a diva - I've worked with 'em.

I like hats that make the heart beat faster.

I make hats for lots of iconic people, and that makes my job very interesting.

I particularly like to travel for work because you see a completely different side of the country you're visiting.

I'm Irish but I design something that is quintessentially English and I love hats.

It thrills observers and makes the wearer feel a million dollars.

Elegance is all in the mind of the wearer.

I believe in a democratic approach to fashion: if you feel good, then great. You may not look good, but it's not the problem.