Maverick Life

TOUCH OF VANITY: STYLE

Top hatter: The unstoppable Crystal Birch

Top hatter: The unstoppable Crystal Birch
Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

Milliner and stylist Crystal Birch’s new hat collection, LIG, comes at the end of a year like no other for the designer, a year when one of her dreams came true, in the middle of a global nightmare.

“Ever since I first came here in 2004 during a school outing, I knew I wanted to work here,” Crystal Birch told Maverick Life editor Emilie Gambade and me back in February 2019, when we visited her at Parisian Milliners in Cape Town just a few months after she had joined the factory’s then 84-year-old owner, Harry Faktor, as a business partner.

In the 14 years between that moment in 2004 and April 2018 when she joined the business, she’d studied millinery, built a career as a stylist, unsuccessfully tried to intern at Parisian Milliners, and then went on to launch her eponymous hat brand in 2013, eventually hiring Parisian Milliners to manufacture her hats, and building a relationship with the factory. And then, as she tells it, in December 2017, she had a dream. “I had a dream about Harry picking up his jacket and leaving, so I came to see him in February 2018 and told him about my dream. And he said to me, ‘I don’t want to just pick up my jacket and leave. I want to know what’s going to happen to the company, for continuity.’ By April 2018 I moved in, and here we are, nine months later, and I have partnered with Harry. He says I brought the internet,” she laughed, in her fast, loud, expressive and energetic way that is unmissable for anyone who has spent longer than a few minutes in her company.

At the time, Emilie wrote of our visit: “There is something Alice in Wonderlandesque in entering the mad world of the hatter. Shelves of moulds stacked like expressionless heads, pieces of silk fabric, straws and feathers floating at will, patterns drying flat before taking form, it’s a place where heads are crowned.”

Fast forward to November 2020, and we find ourselves at the back end of a year that not only stripped us of a certain innocence, but also violently ripped our rose-tinted glasses from our faces, smashed them under its iron heel, and slapped a mask over our polite smiles and told us to keep our distance.

Yet, in her latest hat collection, aptly titled LIG (which means light in Afrikaans) – with pictures of sun-kissed models, rosy cheeks, sans masks, and a literal rosy tint in the pictures – something feels restored, a kind of whimsical romance that can only exist in hindsight, especially viewed from the back end of 2020.

Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

“We looked for a name for this collection, and we thought, ‘light, it must be light. The light at the end of our dark tunnel, the light through the cracks, the light through Covid.’ We’ve almost produced nothing but PPE this year. So we needed to produce something beautiful, simple, something ‘us’, something to put the best of ourselves into,” says Birch.

That association between the idea of light and the collection goes beyond the whimsical and the aesthetic, through to the literal function of a hat, which is protecting the wearer from the sun. “I want people to recognise hats as something essential and not just as a fashion thing, just like they see their shoes. So I’ve done a lot of research and collaborated with dermatologists to find ways to make sure the hats also protect wearers from the harsh African sun,” she explains, “We are immensely proud that all the hats have now been CANSA (Cancer Association of South Africa) approved and tested in their labs and confirmed as practical and UV resistant.”

Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

Her business partner Harry, who had no intention of retiring, finally decided to pick up his jacket and call it a day this year, just as Birch saw in that December dream that led her to his office three years ago.

“Harry is 86, and that puts him in a high-risk category for Covid-19,” says Birch, “so since March he was not able to come to the factory. So we would meet on Zoom. And I think eventually, in that time, being at home with his family, he realised the appeal of retirement. If it were not for Covid-19 I don’t think he would have retired, and personally I think it’s horrible that we force people to retire at 65, when they are still passionate and they want to work. I know people in their 90s who are heading great factories. But I think Harry also saw that the factory was in good hands, and after years of being the factory owner and breadwinner for his family, he is now just enjoying spending time together with them.”

That presented Birch with a golden opportunity to take full ownership of the factory where she once dreamt of working. Admittedly, she did not imagine her dream opportunity would come in the middle of a global pandemic. “It’s been a very wild ride. After taking ownership and reassessing the business, and taking a realistic look at a number of unforeseen challenges as well as the implications of Covid-19 on the business, we had to make some major changes in a short space of time,” she explains. Shortly after taking ownership, she had to manage retirements as well as retrench members of her team, going from 48 to 16, and then she moved from the 1,200 square metres that had been the home of the factory for 70 years, to a space half the size.

Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

Photo by Jacobus Snyman for Crystal Birch

“I’ve learnt so much this year, from legal matters to team structure to moving a manufacturing plant in five days,” says Birch. “I’m a milliner and stylist who signed up to make beautiful hats. And now I’m running a manufacturing plant, I’m spending more time with the legalities, the HR, the PR, the marketing; I spend so much time talking to the banks I feel like I work at FNB.”

While she admits that she is sad that the realities of taking over a business and transforming it in challenging times has taken her away from spending as much time as she would have liked on designing hats, she acknowledges the many ways it has helped her stretch and grow.

“I’m a very, very curious thinker and I love to learn. I’m like a sponge. I feel I’ve been going through business school over the past three years, and I’ve also learnt that you can apply your creativity in business and with money, you know, as you would with a painting or ceramics. The more business tools I learn, the more creative I get when looking to generate money for the business,” she explains.

Like many other business owners faced with challenges during the lockdown, she reached out to banks and the funds set out to support small businesses, with no luck. So she pivoted to producing personal protective equipment (PPE). Says Birch: “In July, during level three lockdown, we had our best turnover in a year, and that was due to our masks and a sale we had. We connected with everybody on Zoom and video calls for the sale, from Mauritius to Latvia to Namibia through to London. As soon as the borders opened we were able to send them the hat. Covid-19 flipped that relationship with our clients for us, it showed us and the clients that you can be anywhere in the world, and you can just switch on your phone and talk and close the sale. I was on back-to-back calls every day for seven days a week, and I would show the clients the hats, explain and try everything for them. And we made our best turnover.”

She also found other moments of unexpected light in the form of collaboration and support from fellow hat businesses. Earlier in the year, her hats completed the looks worn by LVMH Prizewinner Thebe Magugu’s models, for his Spring/Summer 2021 collection shown as part of Paris Fashion Week. She also collaborated with him for his upcoming collection as a 2021 finalist for the Woolmark Prize. “Dean Pozniak of Simon and Mary [hats] assisted so much to meet those deadlines, from getting the raw materials to making the hats. I’ve never seen factories help each other so much to get stuff done. Factories are usually closed off, keeping their info and their sources private. But with Covid-19 we’ve all been quite open, and really helping each other. I’ve never seen that happen on this scale before.”

Since taking ownership, she has changed the name of the factory from Parisian Milliners to The Hat Factory, but maintains its former name as the moniker for one of their collections, which she says is particularly popular with “church ladies” who shop from the boutiques she stocks. In addition to her Crystal Birch collection, she manufactures hats for other designer brands, and also targets tourist locations such as safari lodges and holiday resorts. Along with her smaller team, smaller premises and a “leaner meaner machine”, she is looking ahead, and as energetic as ever.

“People think I’m high. They ask me what drugs I take. And I’m like, ‘guys, I sleep about three or four hours a day, I’ve got a toddler and a fiancé, and a factory to run. I can’t stop.’

“I believe in this thing, I believe in this manufacturing industry. I’ve got this woman who sews all the straw hats, she’s one of a kind; her skill is unbelievably rare, it’s super precious. I want to preserve these skills. I want to train new people, I want to buy them new machines that they can train on. I want to keep this industry alive!” says Birch. DM/ML

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