"I remember in the early nineties people saying the hat was just for old women, but that's ridiculous."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"America brought us the baseball cap; it's one of my favorite hats."
"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."
"I believe that I am a hat designer, not a milliner."
"The personality of the wearer and the hat makes the hat."
"I always design the hat with the wearer in mind; otherwise, it's an inanimate object."
"Wearing a hat is fun; people have a good time when they're wearing a hat."
"I like hats that make the heart beat faster."
"A person carries off the hat. Hats are about emotion. It is all about how it makes you feel."
"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."
"I love the romance of what I do, although because of Isabella, Lady Gaga and Grace Jones, people think I have crazy customers. Sometimes I get more enthusiasm from the housewife who wants a hat and believes in it."
"Hats are radical; only people that wear hats understand that."
"There's a technicality to designing and wearing hats. A hat is balancing the proportions of your face; it's like architecture or mathematics."
"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."
"I grew up in a little village in the west of Ireland."
"Fashion is an illusion. It's a multibillion-pound industry that has to appear frivolous. Designers work and work and work, all night sometimes."
"I make hats for lots of iconic people, and that makes my job very interesting."
"Everybody loves things that sparkle."
"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."
"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."
"Certainly, people like Gaga have introduced a new type of hat-wearing."
