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Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm Saturday 10am - 4pm

Zara Gray Millinery

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Glasgow
Zara Gray Millinery

I create custom hats and headpieces, ready to wear and baby turbans. Order books will reopen March 22
I design and make bespoke fascinators for every occasion.

The right hat will finish your outfit - and no-one can't wear a hat!

20/03/2020

In alternative life I would probably be happily working in marketing. Before launching Zara Gray Milinery fully I worked at a marketing agency.

It is where I picked up many of the skills I use now and learned to constantly keep up to date. Having studied English and had an interest in journalism it suited me.

Had the opportunity come up to study marketing I would have been keen. You would think having worked with graphic designers, web developers and our own little marketing team I would find all of this easy... I don't. The best piece of advice I took from it is not to be a feardy cat!

I used to have a LOT of clients who wanted to run marketing but felt vulnerable. Part of my job then was to persuade them that the benefits outweighed the vulnerability of putting their precious brand out there. Part of my job now is to persuade myself of the same thing! On that note here's my website when it was under construction (by my husband) which I swore I would never do! 🙀

It soft launched at some point in the madness of last year but I've been horribly negligent of it.

18/03/2020

I’ve had my mask (how thematic! 😷🙄) on to dye a lot of feathers today, so as the meet the maker prompt is skill I’m focussing on dyeing to match.

While there are lots of great millinery suppliers like The Trimming Company out there, buying fabric custom dyed fabric would push my prices up and buying online it’s hard to colour match. So although millinery means I’ve collected a lot of skills, dyeing is one I’m most reliant upon.

It enables me to do cool things like picking out the pink for this feather and colour matching the sinamay. The result is a finished hat is very obviously made to match the dress.

I use acid dyes and mix each small batch myself, testing and timing the dyeing process until I get the right shade for each fabric I’m using. It’s time consuming but very satisfying! The possibilities are endless too... ✨✨

13/03/2020

☀️ Colourful and bold. That is all. 💅

08/03/2020

Today’s prompt for Meet The Maker is your favourite thing to make. Mine remain silk flowers. Why? These beauties are amazing wee objet d’art in their own right. Feather flowers come a close second. 🥈

Dyeing, dip-dyeing, hand painting, dyeing to match, miniaturising and oversizing flowers is simply fun. 🥀

My phone has so many flower reference snaps. It would take me a whole other lifetime to make templates and methods for building them before making them into flowers but I would love to. Maybe a winter project for this year?

If I had to say why I guess capturing a bit of floral nature in my studio is wildly satisfying. It’s methodical and I learn about flowers along the way which is pretty fun.

07/03/2020

This is me during last year’s London Hat Week running around London making the famously insular Londoners smile at a stranger with my Troll Hat, having a great time and posing with phone boxes.

London Hat Week’s brilliant in so many ways. The area around Guy’s Hospital (the centre of activities) is a great place to be during LHW. You see ordinary folk, in normal clothes wearing all sorts of creations. Making hats can be a lonesome pursuit but milliners connect and strangers smile and nod because hats are unusual to see and break down the barrier between strangers.

I love that what I make can be so widely uplifting. Hats make passersby smile and transform the wearer. My clients often tell me after an event that they never want to take their hats off which is the most gratifying compliment.

That transformative power and jubilation is what keeps me going through all of the late night sewing, the moments wondering how on earth to get a creation to balance or sourcing a specific trim. I bloody love millinery and the whole mad hatter tribe 😊

05/03/2020

CLOSE UP 👀
💛💖💚💜💛💙
Sequins are VERY time consuming to sew on but I just love how they look. I get really into sewing them on although the thread I use is clear and a lot like fishing line. When it gets tangled it’s frustrating but it’s worth it for the sparkly effect🧵

04/03/2020

🖤🤍My logo absolutely makes me feel more professional. It gets a lot of compliments and I enjoy telling anyone who listens that my husband designed it. He’s pretty talented at the whole graphic design game and took a lot of time getting the continuous ‘Z’ into ‘G’ the way he wanted it.

There are two versions; the easy to recognise round ‘ZG’ used on packaging and social media and the full version which finishes each hat when I add it’s label.

I wanted the logo to be clean, easy to read and timeless, similar to my design aesthetic.

My business name’s changed since I started millinery and this logo was developed when I became full time and had settled on Zara Gray Millinery. I really wanted to get it right and not look back after a couple of years and cringe. We invested a lot of time together working on it. As he was designing it Ally and I sent out so many versions to friends to get feedback. That process was invaluable for getting fresh eyes. Thankfully they spotted the version that reminded folk of the Grey’s Anatomy logo 🤷🏻‍♀️

03/03/2020

🙋🏻‍♀️ I was absolutely that kid with a stationary obsession. Organising my time with pretty books is typically me. 📚

Crossing things off a to do list has always delighted me. Learning to manage my time with a chronic condition (I was diagnosed with endometriosis in October) has made planning my time well even more necessary.

This year I’m using these two to keep on top of everything. For a couple of years I tried going wholly digital. It fails when your battery dies 😳 I plan out each business month and day using the pretty planner from The Maker's Business Toolkit and every part of my life with my page a day diary, complete with colour coding. My phone is still full of notes, pics and screenshots too.

02/03/2020

So this is how I spend most of my time: making teeny, tiny stitches.

I was taught millinery the couture way, with every element done by hand. When I was learning the word glue was blasphemous and I’m grateful to have learned this way. There are definitely wee small hours in which I curse this, but as a greater milliner once summed up this approach I trust my stitches.

Glue and machines have their place but a hand sewn hat lasts. Traditional millinery is the opposite of fast fashion, each element is lovingly (although occasionally grudgingly) sewn and it gives me control. I’m ever grateful for my hands and I do try to look after them.

01/03/2020

It’s Meet the Maker over on Instagram and the first prompt is an introduction. I’m sharing today’s here too because I know a few of you are new followers and might not know me. If you would like me to follow me on my instagram too I’m over there.

Zara Gray is me 👋 I offer bespoke hats and fascinators from my Glasgow studio. I’m currently also working away behind the scenes to make some ready to wear pieces like the recycled fabric headband I’m wearing here available.

I came to millinery accidentally in my early 20’s, in the run up to friends Andy and Donna’s wedding way back in 2009. My Grandma, who I stayed with for the wedding, insisted I wore something on my head. She was a classy lady and someone to be listened to.

I had just graduated from Aberdeen University and had a limited budget. John Lewis Aberdeen’s offerings weren’t to my taste or budget and I found myself in it’s haberdashery department. There I bought some ribbon to match my dress, feathers and a comb. My first made to match piece was wrangled into shape soon after.

Three years later and newly living in Glasgow I stumbled across Nancy Paxton’s millinery classes at Glasgow’s Kelvin College. I was waiting for my friend to put her kids to bed so we could Skype and told her what I’d found when we caught up. I initially wanted to bookmark it as something to try next year but my friend pushed me to sign up for the beginners course starting two weeks later. That was the beginning of my whole mad hatter story.

25/02/2020

🥞Happy pancake day!🥞

These are last years, I’m making mine later with a new recipe for my anti-inflammatory diet so who knows how photogenic they’ll be 🤷🏻‍♀️

Hope you have a good, pancake filled day!

Address

Glasgow

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm
Saturday	10am - 4pm

Telephone

+447846720603

Website

http://www.zaragraymillinery.com/

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