PROFILE

Karen Henriksen MA (RCA) is a milliner, artist and designer-maker.
Her hat designs aim to strike a balance between elegance, innovation and practicality, whilst her sculptural lightshades and wall pieces draw on her millinery and fashion background,
She works from her studio at Cockpit Bloomsbury in the heart of London, where she established her practice in 2005.

Follow Karen on Social Media:
Instagram/men’s hats
Instagram/women’s hats
Instagram/art for interiors

Inspiration

For Karen, inspiration can come from anywhere, finding beauty and elegance in the everyday - from the drapery of a simple hoodie or coat sleeve, to the curves and angles of a chair, the rich geometric pattern of a rose, or the textures and colours on a wall. She has a fascination with contrasting visual elements - solidity versus fragility, rich embellishment juxtaposed with a pared-back minimalism. Alongside this, a preoccupation with more intangible contrasts and shades of grey - language and words alongside the unsaid, the contradictions in human nature and behaviour.

Her work incorporates story-telling, and a sense of ‘taking a line for a walk’ - whether through the intricate and asymmetric pattern-cutting of a hat, the undulating curves of a lightshade, or the not-quite-repetition and spiralling abstraction in her new wall pieces. 

Background

After completing a Fashion & Textiles BA (Hons) degree in 1989, Karen moved to London and began her millinery training. She went on to work for several high profile milliners throughout the 1990s, whilst also working in Adult Education, teaching millinery.

In 2001 she returned to education, gaining a place at the Royal College of Art, where she studied for an MA in Millinery. Bringing considerable experience and making skills, here she was able to define and begin to develop her own distinctive style and design aesthetic.  

Traditional and utilitarian headwear, alongside current urban trends, provided the inspiration for her MA graduating collection in 2003. Featuring sculpted headscarves, caps, hoodies and sou’westers on a grand scale, it was the starting point for her millinery practice, informing both her Couture Collections and the casual Windswept Collection.

See below some images from Karen’s archive.

Read more about the Windswept Collection here, and see more from the Couture archive here.