Frida Barfod: My hats are pieces of art

Her hats are sculptures, wearable art even. So, we were really excited to work on two fur hat design with Frida Barfod, a milliner and headwear designer based in Copenhagen.

When we started our collaboration with her on our inspirational Fur Vision 2023 collection, we presented headwear designer Frida Barfod with a question: How do you make a hat that is a sculpture, wearable and luggage friendly all at the same time?

“That was really tricky, especially when the hats need to travel to events around the world. We came up with a Lego-solution where each part of the hat can be worn separately, and each piece are still sculpture-like. In the end, the concept of a travelling hat gave me the biggest inspiration and learning for me in this project,” explains Frida. We were lucky to get two Lego-solution hats: one made with mink and the other with fox.

Inspired by Japanese parasols

The final hats are magnificent art pieces where there’s always a new angle to look at. Just look at the mink hat with the wooden stick breams on the header photo. Frida, where did you get the idea for that?
“I thought of a Japanese parasol and wanted to interpret that into a hat design. For both hats, I wanted to also make scarfs because in The Great Fur Caravan photos, a similar styling looked so cozy. I thought they could be useful to fight off the cold, but the scarfs could also be worn alone.”

Using fox in her hats was something new to Frida – and at first the material confused her.
“It’s so wonderfully fluffy. I usually try to achieve simple silhouettes with my designs. So, I learned how to use fox so that it doesn’t hide the shape but compliments the denim material of the hat.”

The headwear designer says she loves the mink hat with the brim.
“The hat is complicated, big and shapely. It combines materials like shaved and natural mink with leather, Plexiglas, and wood so seamlessly. And even if you leave the brim out when wearing the hat, it’s still a piece of art.”

 

Read more about Frida Barfod from her webpages.

Read more about the inspiration for this Fur Vision collection, Vogue’s The Great Fur Caravan