If you happen to be in Madrid, or at a flying distance, you should not miss this opportunity to polish or kickstart your millinery skills at the atelier of Charo Iglesias. Charo is an “old school” milliner (meant as a GREAT compliment), her hats are made to haute couture standards, and she has a distinguished and faithful clientele.

You can see some of her work at her website: www.charoiglesias.com

These are the courses she will be giving:

11, 12 and 13 February 2011: FASCINATORS, BASES and TRIMMMINGS

24, 25, 26 and 27 February 2011: BLOCKING HATS IN STRAW AND FELT

2, 9, 16, 23, 30 March 2011: KNOWLEDGE AND MANIPULATION OF STRAW 1

18, 19, 20 March 2011: KNOWLEDGE AND MANIPULATION OF STRAW 2

This is a unique opportunity to learn from one of the best milliners around, and to do it at her own atelier. The only knowledge required is knowing how to sew by hand.

If you want details just let me know on the comments and I will email you the info I have (schedule, description of the course and prices).

Last week was the last class of the millinery course that my friend Nina Pawlowsky was giving at Escola Massana in Barcelona. There was a celebration dinner and I was invited because I was a substitute teacher for one class (and some of the students are followers of this blog!). I had a great time, and it was fun to be there with these wonderful ladies, all of us with our hats on, of course.

On the picture above you can see Nina (the one holding the flowers) and her students (one holding a 2 piece cork block made in class). They were very very happy with the course, very sad it was over, and I must say they were very good students to work with.

The Massana School, one of the centers where Nina gives classes, is a center of art and design belonging to the Town Hall of the City of Barcelona. It is placed in a beautiful historical building on the Gothic quarter (Hospital de la Santa Creu) and was founded in 1929 thanks to Agusti Massana’s legacy, a well known patissier and philanthropist. Unfortunately their website is available only in Catalan language, which is something I find absurd at many, many levels, but I’m not going to bore you with my rantings about that.

The 2009-2010 course will be even more interesting because instead of being just one course lasting two semesters it’s going to be divided in two different courses, both lasting 60 hours, one about hatmaking in general (starting mid-October) and the other one about fascinators and turbans (starting beginning of March). Nina is a very experienced milliner and speaks perfect English so if anyone reading this blog is interested in joining these courses and needs help inscribing just let me know. Inscription is from 2 to 10 September and from 18 to 28 January.