David Dunkley’s vintage hats inspire his own outthere designs.
Milliner David Dunkley’s love of headwear knows no bounds.
Talking to David Dunkley, it becomes clear how many adages there are that pertain to the practice of millinery. Within moments of being asked how he was drawn to his vocation, the Torontobased hat maker rhymes off one such saying: “Nobody grows up wanting to be a hat maker; we all fall into it by accident.” This is certainly true for Dunkley, at least. He says that after starting his career working for a politician at Queen’s Park (a selfdescribed “dream job”), he began to notice that “everyone else around [him] loved policy way more than [he] did.” In an effort to flex his creative muscle and feel more inspired, Dunkley enrolled in a hatmaking class through the now extinct Board of Education for the City of Toronto. He was soon hooked. It wasn’t an entirely surprising love affair, though. Dunkley reveals that he’d “secretly always wanted to be a sculptor”
PLUME SERVICE
A gift from a client that’s now in Dunkley’s private collection, this extravagant cap was created by milliner Yvonne Woolgar using hand-cut feathers. Dunkley says FASHION’s shoot allowed him to understand the totality of the treasures he has amassed, something he wasn’t aware of because he keeps some hats at home and others in his shop.
TITLE CHARACTER
Dunkley, who has a room in his house devoted to his vintage hats, is such a fan of milliner Lilly Daché’s work that he owns a first-run copy of her book, which was published in 1946. And it’s clear how much the flamboyant French creative has inspired him. “My designs are pretty outgoing,” he says.
TOP IT OFF
Dunkley wears a restored pop-up opera hat from his private collection; he is surrounded by several pieces from his Queen’s Plate 2020 couture collection, including a red and orange hat featuring a delicate suspended hummingbird. The bird is handmade and took 40 hours to create.
HERO WORSHIP
“I’m heavily influenced by Philip Treacy,” says Dunkley about the hat maker who has designed couture headwear for Chanel and Christian Dior. A trilby from Treacy’s Andy Warhol-themed collection, which Dunkley purchased at a garage sale, is one of his prized pieces.
GRAND IDEAS
A cake-themed topper that Dunkley created for late Toronto fashion designer Pat McDonagh in 2009 is surrounded by items Dunkley has collected, including a vintage fur velour hat bedecked with a snakeskin bow that was sold at Ira Berg. “It was the most elegant store you’ve ever seen,” Dunkley says of the Toronto shop, which closed in 1998.
STRAW GOAL
As the official milliner for the running of the Queen’s Plate, Dunkley creates couture headwear meant to make a statement at the races. Here, he has paired a handwoven straw top hat—which has a peau de soie brim—from his newest couture collection with a Ralph Lauren suit.
NAME GAME
“There’s a saying in my industry that everything you make should look like it was touched by a light hand,” says Dunkley. Here, he models a very personal piece that he made after learning “the artistry of using feathers to create letters and words.”
ICON STATUS
Using embroidered silk fabric gifted by McDonagh, Dunkley lovingly restored this top hat; it was later worn by fashion journalist Jeanne Beker. “That was a big career moment for me,” he says.
and soon found that the skill of millinery “has a very sculptural element to it.”
Dunkley pursued more of his hat-making education at George Brown College. “Life and careers are about timing,” he says. “The college had rebooted its millinery program after it had been dormant for almost 20 years. It was fantastic timing for me because the people who were teaching it were the only four people doing millinery professionally in Toronto.” Dunkley explains that because local milliners were becoming more focused on theatrical work at the time (as opposed to fashionfocused hat design), it was a huge advantage to have their expertise available. “Millinery was a dying profession,” he says.
After being packaged out of his job in the political sphere, Dunkley took his wares to the street—more specifically, to Toronto’s famed St. Lawrence Market, where he set up a stall outside to sell his hats but was soon offered a space inside. “I’d never had a job in a store,” he laughs, adding that he calls the time “his master’s in retail.”
Seeing the public’s interest in his designs fuelled Dunkley’s desire to learn more about millinery, and he wrote a letter to Rose Cory, M.B.E., the royal milliner of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, inquiring about going to England to train with her. Much to his delight, she said yes. “The experience really taught me couture techniques—and the importance of treating this as an art form, not as a craft,” he says.
With all this knowledge now at his disposal and more clients expressing an interest in his daring, flamboyant designs—“We don’t create for the shy,” he says—Dunkley was eventually able to open a studio and shopfront on the outskirts of Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, 11 years ago. He also began to more thoroughly explore practices and trends from eras past. “As I started to become more interested and engaged in the artistry of hat making, I began to look at vintage hats and educate myself about who was who in terms of designers and what hats I wanted to collect,” he says. Dunkley would also take older hats apart to better understand the work of those who came before him. “Hats are made the same way today as they were 100 years ago; the techniques haven’t changed,” he says, talking about the process of using heat to shape felt or straw over a hat block.
Dunkley’s private collection of headpieces now numbers nearly 100; some items are archived favourites of his own designs, including hats from the couture collections he creates for the annual Queen’s
Plate horse race, for which he is the official milliner. “As my eye and taste improved, I really looked at my collection and asked, ‘If I’m going to own something, why do I want to own this?’” he says. “‘Historically it might be important—and I shouldn’t let it go away—or it’s just a beautiful version of something from that time period.’”
The oldest hat Dunkley has is from 1905—a simple black number made from beaver pelt with a modest black embellishment that he describes as “a day hat.” From there, in terms of fabulousness, the ante is upped significantly. There’s a hat from the 1950s that features a bewitching flurry of white feathers. And there’s a piece by the “magnificent” Philip Treacy, a London-based milliner whose designs are worn by many royals, including Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Remembering how he came upon the hat makes Dunkley chuckle. “Treacy released a collection with Andy Warhol prints, and I randomly found one at a garage sale. I did the calm ‘Oh, how much is this?’” he laughs. “They had no idea what it was; it was just an old hat to them.” He also owns an original Christian Dior straw hat, the label of which thrills anyone who sets their eyes upon it. He archives pieces from his collection at his shop for private viewings by customers who are keen to see a piece of hat-making history.
There’s also plenty of local love among Dunkley’s treasures. “Some of my favourite things to collect are items from Toronto milliners,” he says of his preoccupation with artifacts from the city’s past. “These artisans are no longer around, and their shops are no longer around, but here’s a box with their name on it. It’s something that person made with their hands, and there’s a label with their name on it. I’m fascinated by that, because that will be me one day.”
One of the crown jewels in Dunkley’s collection is from famed French milliner Lilly Daché; so avid is he about her work that he owns an autographed first-run copy of her book, Talking Through My Hats. Dunkley divulges that if money were no object, he would purchase an original couture piece of Daché’s, which could cost from $500 to $1,800.
But he is currently on the hunt for a bonnet— anything from the 1750s to 1850s will do. And as for what comes after procuring these precious pieces, another adage springs forth. If there is a particularly charming anecdote attached to a newly acquired headpiece, Dunkley will write it down and affix it for reference. “We say that every hat has a story,” he notes. It’s safe to say that what Dunkley has collected speaks volumes.