‘My dream is to make a hat for Beyonce to wear’

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Holly Johnson taught herself to make hats using videos on the internet

“The dream is to put a hat on Beyonce.”

Holly Johnson has been making felt hats from scratch since just before the pandemic – and in that time they have gone from being bought by friends, to being sold worldwide.

Some look like mushrooms, some are moulded to look like skulls – and the results can get bought by Las Vegas magicians or for dogs who appear in films.

“It’s really special, sending them off and knowing that they’re just gonna be worn in a completely different culture in a different part of the world,” the 30-year-old said.

“I’ve had so much shock when I’ll open my website sometimes and it’s like Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Germany, Italy, there’s been Turkey, Morocco.

“I just get to kind of think, I wonder what they’re doing – who’s wearing it, what are they doing in that hat?”

A woman with long hair which is dyed pink at the front, purple towards the back, looks towards the camera while wearing a cream, wide-brimmed hat. She wears a light blue short-sleeved denim top. She has her left arm resting on top of a circular block of wood on a table. Behind her are a variety of hats hanging on the wall. — Her hat business started to take off during the pandemic

Internet videos played a key role in helping the self-taught hat-maker to learn her craft.

“I never planned to become a hat-maker, I think I’ve always liked dressing up and making costumes and stuff like that,” Johnson said.

“It started when I made a big cardboard hat for a friend for a birthday.

“Then I kind of went into foam hats and cutting foam, hot gluing it together, and they were very messy.

“Then I just Googled it one day. I had no idea, I’d never heard of hat-making. I just kind of watched lots of videos. “

After a lot of trial and error, figuring out her own techniques, she said she started really getting into it when she was furloughed during the pandemic, doing it every day.

The business, HoJo Hattery, began in her and her partner’s spare room – “stinking the house out” – before branching out to her current location in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.

“There’s so much hat-making heritage here,” Johnson said. “Newcastle-under-lyme was known for [it] in the 17th and 18th Centuries.”

A woman with bright pink hair and a grey baseball cap on her head, is working on the bottom of a small black top hat. She has an air filter mask across her nose and mouth while her left hand holds a paint brush which she is dipping into a box containing clear liquid. Several small black top hats are sat next to her on the table. — She now works out of Newcastle-under-Lyme, in part because of the town’s history with hat-making

Among her recent commissions was making the trophies for the Music Awards of Staffordshire and Cheshire in January – mini top hats, modelled on the famous one worn by rock guitarist and Stoke-on-Trent old boy Slash, of Guns N’ Roses.

“We wanted little versions of those as a nod to the music industry in Stoke,” the hat-maker said.

“The hats are completely made how I make my normal hats.

“Every single little step, all of the little sewing details, inner sweatbands, all the embellishments and everything.”

Two images, side by side. On the left, a gloved hand holds the wooden base of a trophy with a metal plaque on the side of the wood that says "Music Awards". On the top of the wooden base, a metal spike goes up to hold the bottom of a small black top hat, with silver badges around the base. On the right image, a man with long black hair past his shoulders and wearing a red and black lumberjack-style checked shirt, plays guitar. On his head is a black top hat with similar silver badges around its rim. — She made the trophies for the recent Music Awards of Staffordshire and Cheshire – featuring mini top hats modeled after the one worn by Slash, from Guns N’ Roses

With thousands following her on social media including 9,000 on Instagram, her audience is truly global and Johnson said that had led to some special commissions.

“One guy was from Las Vegas, a magician and he wanted like a skull-crown fedora hat then it had little buckles inside, so that he could attach things to do magic tricks with,” she said.

She also once made “a bicorn hat for a dog that was in the new Napoleon film”.

“The dog did not wear the hat in the film, but he did wear it for photoshoots after, which was really funny.”

A woman with long hair which is dyed pink at the front, purple towards the back, looks slightly down and to the left of the camera. She is wearing a wide-brimmed cream hat and a light blue denim jacket with short-sleeves, showing she has a variety of tattoos on her arms. Her left hand holds the top of a black top hat while her right holds a wooden bar to the hat. — Holly Johnson admits she is still shocked to find out people from countries such as Morocco, Germany and Iceland want her hats

America is where most of her sales are now, nearly three-quarters – “maybe they just love hats more over there” – but she has one ambition she wants to achieve.

“I always used to joke years ago that the dream is to put a hat on Beyonce,” the 30-year-old admitted.

While she waits for the phone call or a slide into her DMs from Queen Bey, Johnson said she would always look to get as creative as she could when it came to making hats.

“I’d love to find a market where I can really kind of push the boundaries, get a bit wild, make really, really huge hats or really like weird creative shapes,” she grinned.

“I guess the dream is just any celebrity [to wear them] – I’ll take any celebrity.”

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