Philip Somerville

The son of a shoe repairer, Philip Somerville was born in the Hampshire city of Winchester and educated at St Thomas's School.[3] After a spell in the Merchant Navy, he became an actor in Australia without much success. His family moved from Winchester to Invercargill on the South Island of New Zealand and Somerville joined them there. In 1953, he took a job with Jean Hat Company and then moved on to Star Hat Company in Auckland. In 1961, Star Hat Company sent him back to the UK on a "study holiday", giving him an allowance for his trip. Somerville paid back the money to his employer and joined the milliner Otto Lucas as sales manager and assistant.[3][5]

Somerville began designing hats for the Otto Lucas brand and, after Lucas was killed in 1971 in a plane crash, set up in business for himself. He supplied London stores such as Harrods, as well as exclusive retailers in New York City, before opening his own store in Bond Street for bespoke and private clients in 1987. Later, his premises moved to Chiltern Street, Marylebone.[3]

The Queen became a Somerville client in the early 1980s and, during the height of this design relationship, he was supplying her with around 50 hats a year. This was a process that involved careful colour matching with her clothes designers as well as multiple fittings to ensure the hat fitted and stayed on whatever the weather conditions.[3] Other British royal clients included Princess Diana and the Duchess of Kent, while fans among European royalty included Queen Silvia of Sweden.[3] Somerville is said to have persuaded Princess Diana to move towards larger hats with wider brims, rather than the feathered and netted creations she favoured in the early years, and he believed this change of style helped to revive hat sales among younger customers.[3]

More recently, Somerville made a hat hired by the then Kate Middleton. This was sold at a charity auction in 2012 for more than twice its guide price.[6]