Her fabulous super-size fluffy creations are loved by pop stars and drag race royalty before she's had the chance to create a logo or website. Lucy chats to Hat & Spicy founder Chloe Messer to get the inside scoop on her creative process, and how a Spice Girls music video inspired her...
How did you come up with the idea for Hat & Spicy?
I wanted the spare room in my house to look like one of the rooms in the ‘Who do you think you are’ – Spice Girls video. So I went and bought a huge roll of long pile orange faux fur and covered all the walls in it. I had a load of excess left over, so I just started covering stuff in orange faux fur, including an old floppy sun hat. My friend had a baby blue Emma Brewin, that I was in love with & I’d also been obsessing over Benny Andallos fluffy green hat worn by FKA Twigs. Neither which I could afford at the time (this was just between the first two lockdowns and my work was non-existent), so this was a chance to create something similar for myself.
The hat looked amazing and I wore it to a fancy dress party, put up a load of photos up on instagram and my friend Louise Carmell who is a stylist asked if she could loan it for a shoot – her photos were amazing! Another of my friends Alex, wore the same hat to Shambala Festival, she looked so bomb and got sooooo many people approach her, asking where she got the hat. So I then thought maybe I was on to something here. Because of my job, I’m part of some costume networking groups on facebook , a woman on there was selling a big box of faux fur offcuts cheap. I bought the furs with the hats in mind and got a little creative, patch-working the offcuts together. The first hat made from these offcuts, I gave to my best mate Demi for her birthday, and made another for myself – we both wore these to We Out Here festival last summer – and, like with Alex, the hats got a LOT of attention. In the wee hours of the morning at one of the stages a lovely girl called Lola excitedly approached me, asking to try on the hat and convinced me to set up shop and, became my first customer! BIG UP LOLA. Fast forward a few months, a few more festivals, a lot more parties and countless excited people asking ‘where did you get that hat?!’ I finally decided to start up a Depop page. Within a few days I had a notification to say that Depop had featured the hats on their discover & explore page, which gave the page a huge kick start. A week later, I got a DM on my personal instagram for Depop, saying that they were going to feature the page on their instagram on Saturday night, which was also Halloween night – a prime time spot for insta, with everyone sharing their costumes, eeeeeeek!! BIG UP DEPOP!!
So, I was kind of given the push to set up my own page ASAP – and had to also come up with a name to go with this. I knew that I wanted the brand to be something fun and incorporate a play on words. I had a toss up between That’s Hat (in homage to Paris Hilton) or Hat & Spicy. I ended up choosing Hat & Spicy because that’s exactly how you feel when you’re at a party and wearing one of the hats! I also wanted to add the ‘party supplies’ tagline – as again, this is exactly what they are; the piece de resistance to your party look, whether its for a festival, a birthday, a show., whatever. It was also a bit of a play on the business cards that dealers drop off everywhere. I made up a load of business cards that just said ‘party supplies’ on one side and ’@hat.n.spicy’ on the other and dropped them around various places. People might have been a bit disappointed when they found hats rather than their local dealer lol. Anyway, I digress, I set up the page on Friday night, then Saturday Depop made their post, tagged the insta and then from there it sort of took off nicely. I started getting orders in, messages for loans and yeah it’s been a bit of weird, accidental whirlwind and I feel very blessed and grateful for all the lovely opportunities that have come my way since.
Do you have a background in fashion?
I didn’t ever study fashion – or anything else for that matter lol. I went straight into work when I was 17 and since then have had lots of different job roles – however they’ve always had a background in either fashion, music or events. I interned at Company magazine in the fashion cupboard, another internship for a fashion PR company, I worked at LUSH selling soap, did 3 months at MTV working on their socials, did a season in Ibiza for Ibiza Rocks hotel and worked for bars and clubs in Shoreditch looking after their private parties… the list goes on. Currently (other than hats) I work as a freelance costume assistant, and this was my full time job previous to HAT & SPICY. I started that through assisting one of my best friends Verity who is a costume designer. The first job I ever worked with her on, was for Sam Smith’s ‘One Last Song’ music video. For this we had a little arts and crafts session and created these beautiful show girl headpieces from up-cycling fake Evisu visors from the pound shop and lots of trimmings and feathers from Ridley Road. We had so much fun just getting crafty, making pretty things, and ever since that my favourite jobs have always been the ones where we have had to dig out the glue gun. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to work on the costume team for some incredible Artists music videos, and some amazing productions in film & tv, including The Crown – which was an absolute dream!!
What inspires you on the daily to create?
I like to create custom hats which are individual to each customer. So really, it’s their own personality and style that inspires me. When I started off by creating hats for my friends for their birthdays, I would keep their vibe in mind and try to create a hat that reflects their uniqueness. I also like to think where the hat is going and what it’s for and match the hat to the party or festival or outfit. I also have a very bad shopping & hoarding habit – I love nothing more than mooching about the charity shops, whether irl or online, and when I see something with a great shape, print or texture, then I have to have it or I won’t stop thinking about it for days. I now just convince myself that I’ll buy it, then turn it into a HAT & SPICY creation. It helps to justify the purchase, so I can get my fix!
Have you had any famous clients so far? (now’s the time for some name drops!)
I absolutely love drag race – and have been so bloody lucky to have created hats for season 2’s iconic queens, Ginny Lemon and Ellie Diamond, and am currently in the process of creating one for A’Whora. Honestly – dreams come true vibes for all three of them, I am such a huge fan and can now die happy. I’ve also created the cutest Hat for Self Esteem for the prettiest Valentines Day shoot, which made the cover of Time Out, which was wild! The shoot was absolutely beautiful and it was a mad moment to see my hat in print on such a phenomenal woman, on such a gorgeous shoot. They’ve also been worn by Jax Jones, C-Kay, Nqobilé, Jazelle (Ugly Worldwide), Kat Penkin. The absolute dream team, Ben & Natalie, who run No Basic Bombshell (an amazing jewellery brand based in Birmingham) are headed to LA this month and are going to be pimping out some HAT & SPICY at Coachella and DRAG-CON, so hopefully there will soon be some more names to add to the list!
Who would be your dream client to make a hat for and why?
The Spice Girls!!! I’m currently in the process of creating a line of hats based on each of their personalities (lil exclusive for you). So if I could get them on their heads it would be UNREAL. I truly do believe in girl power! They are the OG style icons and of course they can then be HAT & SPICY GIRLS 😉
What struggles have you faced in your biz so far?
I’ve definitely struggled with my time management and inability to set boundaries and say no. I’ve been extremely fortunate with the exposure so far – but because of it, my screen time has probably increased by about 90%. This has been quite draining and I’ve struggled with getting back to people and probably have missed some golden opportunities by not responding quick enough or missing a message. But with everything I have got – I will always say yes and try to accommodate as much as possibly can, even if it means staying up and sewing until 6am. This has happened on way too many occasions, and I end up a little stressed mess for days. I also have my studio set up in my house – which is great but I’m very bad at getting myself going first thing and I procrastinate a LOT, which just has a knock on effect and I end up working late pretty much every night. I struggle with the organisational side too – I still haven’t finished my website, created a logo, got my own packaging etc etc. And these are all things that should have happened months ago!!
What is your big dream for Hat n Spicy?
I would absolutely love to be in the crowd at the pyramid stage Glastonbury, look up & the headliner is wearing HAT & SPICY! Just to be like, I made that biiiiiitch!! Would be proper pinch me moment. But other than that, I would love to get to the point where I can pay my bills and live GOOD through the sales of the hats. It would be amazing to keep the custom element to the brand, but also do collection drops that sell out in minutes! And maybe get to the point where I could afford an assistant to help me with some organisation!
Where/how can people purchase your hats?
You can purchase them via my website www.hatandspicy.com, through my depop page, or dropping me a message on the Instagram @hat.n.spicy
