William Chambers
William in his Glasgow store. Photo courtesy of GCMB.
William in his Glasgow store. Photo courtesy of The Herald.
William in his garden, which inspires many of his designs. Photo: The Herald.
William Chambers is a leading British milliner who creates handmade hats that are stocked in the country’s top department stores. He is a former recipient of the British Fashion Council and Stephen Jones 'Headonism' collective. He launched William Chambers Millinery in 2008 and opened his hat shop and atelier in Glasgow city centre in 2014.
William gained a First Class Hons degree in Textile Design at the Scottish College of Textiles before studying millinery at Metropolitan University. He worked for luxury haberdashery VV Rouleaux before setting up William Chambers Millinery in 2008 after winning the VICE UK Creative 30 competition. He won Accessory Designer of the Year three times at the Scottish Fashion Awards, in 2010, 2012 and 2014.
His hats are stocked in the UK's best department stores, including Harrods and Fenwick, and are in the collections of the National Museum of Scotland and The Hat Works, Stockport. His hats have appeared in Vogue, Elle, Style.com, Tatler, Grazia, Red, Glamour, Conde Nast Brides, Wallpaper, Travel & Leisure, Nylon and Harpers Bazaar and he features in the hardback book Couture Hats.
He and his small team create hats in his Glasgow studio/store for customers across the UK and internationally.
Celebrities who have worn his hats include Kelis, Kate Moss, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ashley Jensen, Roisin Murphy, Livia Firth, Lauren Hill, Anna Della Russo, Judy Murray and the Duchess of Sussex who wore a William Chambers green veiled teardrop hat to her final official Royal engagement at the Commonwealth Day Service.
In 2015, Joy City Shanghai held the first major exhibition of his hats, arranged by HAI Marketing in conjunction with the China-Britain Business Council as part of the UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange 2015. In 2018, The Lighthouse in Glasgow held a solo show of his work, inspired by Charles Rennie Macintosh as part of the centenary celebrations.
William seeks to modernise millinery with a fresh look at how we dress the head today. William’s taste for the avant-garde mixed with his knowledge of the retail sector results in designs that are at once both exquisite and wearable. He mixes traditional materials such as felt and sinamay with contemporary materials like latex, plastic and metallic leather, creating headwear that is both progressive and desirable. He takes his inspiration from many sources, but the biggest influence on his designs is his own flower-filled back garden: he is as keen a gardener as he is a milliner.
“He is a fantastic milliner... He makes things that are classically beautiful in an elegant way but he makes things that are wearable. If I was Pippa or Kate I would be looking to someone like William Chambers because he has that modern edge
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