John Boyd
Scot whose royal headwear was behind a ‘hat renaissance’
JOHN BOYD, who has died aged 92, was a milliner who enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the royal family; Princess Anne first wore his designs when she was 17 and he was credited with sparking a “hat renaissance” when he designed pieces for Diana, Princess of Wales, in the 1980s.
The gently spoken Scotsman worked for three generations of her family – Diana, her mother Frances Shand Kydd and her grandmother Ruth, Lady Fermoy.
Boyd first met the young Diana some time before her engagement. “To me, she was a poor wee lassie dressing up in her mother’s clothes,” he said.
He met her again a few months before her wedding when her mother brought her to his showroom, then in Brompton Arcade. “She was quite shy, but it quickly became clear she wanted to see the workroom upstairs and meet the girls there,” he recalled. “They got chatting and she told them she’d come because there was a marriage in view, though she didn’t say it was hers.
“Then she spotted a tricorne hat – a new shape for us – which was going to be in the latest collection, and she said, ‘Oh, I do like that, I think I want that for my going away hat’. And that was when we realised it was her wedding she was talking about.”
The hat was plucked from the collection, and the shape reserved for Diana. Boyd made another in the same peach-coloured silk as her Bellville Sassoon goingaway outfit, and topped it with ostrich feathers – a reference to the Prince of Wales’s three-feathered insignia – which were dyed to match the fabric. The hat was a big hit and suddenly ostrich feathers were all the rage.
In her early years as a member of the royal family, the Princess was rarely seen without a hat. Boyd became one of her most trusted designers, developing a kindly, teasing relationship with the woman he always thought of as “Mrs Shand Kydd’s wee lassie”.
The youngest of seven children, John Richardson Boyd was born in Edinburgh on April 5 1925. His father was a printer who lost his job when Boyd was young.
John’s first job in 1939 involved working for an Edinburgh rubber company that made camouflage for tanks and Wellington boots. One of his colleagues was a society lady called Heather Van Altena, who had been drafted in to help the war effort. The teenage Boyd ended up doing most of her work for her and Mrs Van Altena was so grateful that when she caught him sketching out of boredom she resolved to help him find a more suitable job after the war.
Before that, in 1943, aged 18, he was conscripted into the Royal Navy and took part in the Normandy landings. He recalled that the boat on which he crossed the Channel was guided by dolphins swimming ahead and guiding them to avoid mines.
After VE Day Mrs Van Altena introduced Boyd to Aage Thaarup, then the biggest name in London millinery, and he served his apprenticeship at Thaarup’s atelier in Grosvenor Square. His new career did not begin promisingly, however: “My first hat was literally thrown back at me by an outraged woman in Chelsea. ‘You beast!’ she screamed, ‘I’m looking for a new husband, not trying to get rid of one’.”
By the mid-1950s Boyd had become the milliner of choice for society ladies, and his client list would include Princess Anne, Princess Michael of Kent, Baroness Thatcher and, more recently, the Duchess of Cambridge, who wore a wide-brimmed John Boyd hat for the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in 2016.
John Boyd, who was unmarried, was appointed MBE in 2014. Many of his creations are on display in the V&A.
John Boyd, born April 5 1925, died February 20 2018