Eugenia Kim, wearing the Anna 'Haircut' Hat.

Chapeau prodigy, Eugenia Kim, is celebrating her 20th anniversary with an exclusive Barneys retrospective collection. While she has shared her success with Barneys over the past two decades, much of her achievement derives from the innovation and bold thinking of her former 22-year-old self, who unintentionally built an accessories empire. Kim’s approach to luxury is originative, marrying clean lines and classic shapes with bold, edgy, yet feminine styles. Unique trims, vivid colors, and superior fabrics are the defining aspects that set Kim’s accessories apart from other’s in the industry.

From career path to creative process’, we sat down with Eugenia, to discuss past and present designs, reflecting her 20 years in business:

When did you recognize your passion for millinery?

When I was younger, I always loved wearing hats. I grew up in the most conservative environment and went to Dartmouth College, also ultra-conservative. I remember finding this aqua bobbled, metal, flapper hat and I wore it with a Patagonia sweater in a frat basement, and I wondered why everyone was staring at me. Hats were always my outlet for style.

How did you decide to lead a new path, having graduated from Dartmouth College in Psychology?

I decided I wanted to be a journalist, so I worked at Conde Nast, and they offered free classes in anything related to what you do, so I took a millinery class. I was at Conde Nast for a year, but I wasn’t that great at being an administrative assistant and basically got fired. I had an intervention with Linda Wells, who now laughs at the fact that this happened because I wore lingerie to work. You know, the 90’s slip dress moment. I was like “first of all this is Dolce and Gabbana. Second of all, we just wrote about slip dresses!” Which was very 22-year-old me. So yeah, I got fired.

I continued to make hats after the millinery class. I decided to cut my hair one night, and it was so bad I had to shave my head. It was the middle of December, and I looked like the Dalai Lama. So I decided to make “Haircut” hats out of felt in many different styles. One day I was shopping around in Soho, and two different store owners approached me about my hat, which used to happen in the 90’s. By the end of that day, I had appointments with the two stores. After that, one of them started carrying my hats, and that’s how it began really.

How did the creation of your company begin?

After that one store bought my hats, I just kind of went with it. A lot of my friends were working in the magazine industry, so I was instantly getting a lot of press because I knew everyone. It snowballed from there, and it was very organic. I was thinking “let’s see how far this goes” and I can do something else next year, but it kept going, and here we are 20 years later.

Your designs approach luxury from a bold, edgy, yet feminine viewpoint. How has the marriage of these ideas propelled the vision of your brand?

It’s a very personal thing for me. I think I’m a bold woman and I’ve always had an edge to myself. I’m a downtown girl! It embodies my personality, but in a universal way that a lot of women can relate to. There’s something that a lot of women can relate to in that my canvas is always very clean looking; I’m not a maximalist.

The ‘Haircut' hats have become a staple style of yours over the years. How has it become an iconic part of your company?

It’s one of the first styles I ever made, and it’s so unique. I think I saw Hussein Chalayan made a version of it on his runway a few years later, who’s a fantastic artist, and I was like “oh cool, he’s knocking ME off!”

I started designing a lot of haircut pieces for window dressers all over the city with Humberto Leon. We used to do a lot of projects together, and he was always ordering haircut hats for all these different store windows. Years later, he thought we should do a little retrospective collection with the haircut hats, so we designed all these different styles for Opening Ceremony.

A little later, my strangest customer, Bill Murray, got the Elvis hat and the Ron hat, that had crazy 70s sideburns.

I also come from a family of Oncologists, and it's something that women undergoing chemotherapy can relate to. Instead of covering your hair with a wig, it's a way to be bold and different.

What decades inspire your designs the most?

I was a child of the 80s, so I always have that inflection. Even if I’m doing a 60s or 70s type of season I still have a bit of the 80s in it. In my early years, I was inspired by the 20s; Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby, the flappers and their bobs, hip flasks, tucked in stockings, and the freedom of shorter dresses. I was mesmerized by the mood of that.

Describe your creative process.

It’s very organic. We usually start with seasonal inspiration, like this upcoming spring it’s David Hockney, and then we start working on a color palette based off of that. I’m very materials inspired, so I look for elements that relate to our inspiration, but sometimes I veer off a little because it's nice not to have everything be so strict and literal when referencing inspiration. We have an in-house atelier, who hand-makes our hats. So I conceptualize an idea, and then they make it, and we make changes from there. Some designers are very “this, this, and this” and I’m more “let's get from point A to point B, which will lead us to point C,” it’s a very circuitous route.

Of all your products, which design do you wear the most?

I literally and figuratively wear a lot of hats. One week I love one thing, and the next week it’s something else. Right now, I’m having a moment of this Visor that looks like a boater hat. But, I think it depends on the season. It’s like having a lot of children. I have like 500 children in this showroom.

Which product or collection has been the most rewarding experience?

My next bag collection coming out in Spring 2019 because it’s been such a labor of love. It’s very colorful, and entirely invokes Eugenia Kim, I’m really proud of it. Figuring out all the constructions, and getting everything right, has been so rewarding. Also, the retrospective [20th Anniversary] collection because I have a lot of memories I forgot. Going through my old polaroids, it was like going through a family album, but my family being hats.

Since the inception of your brand, you have added shoes, men's, kids, handbags, scarves, and most recently, a customization program to your list of categories. How do you hope to expand and grow in the years to come?

I feel that I have a particular aesthetic that people are attracted to, so I want to expand as much as I can into other categories within accessories.

Eugenia Kim's 20th Anniversary Retrospective Collection in Exclusivity with Barneys New York:

Your relationship with Barneys New York first began at the creation of your brand. How has this relationship developed and prospered over the years?

I was not very business savvy when I first started. The first store that I sold to, Barneys saw the hats in the window, and they made an appointment. I was naive then because they said they liked the collection and alluded to the fact that they might order. The New York Times wrote a piece about me in the Style section, and they asked, “Where will it be available to buy?” to which I replied “Barneys New York,” but I didn’t even have an order yet, I was just that dumb. Once the article came out, the Barneys buyer saw it and freaked out; they needed the hats ASAP. I didn’t get them in ASAP because I was making them all by hand; It took me the whole summer to make 20 hats.

I love Barneys because personally, it’s like my Tiffanys. I love going there because of the way they cultivate their designers in a certain way. The buyer that was my buyer 20 years ago is now the DMM [Divisional Merchandising Manager]. She came to my retrospective and hugged me, we’ve come such a long way. It’s cool because it’s been 20 years for me with this business, but also 20 years with Barneys.

If you had to name this collection, what would it be and why?

I would call it “Iconic.” I went through hundreds and hundreds of archives of mine that I’ve designed over the past two decades, and I choose styles that I thought make my brand what it is today.

Left: Mamba Hat, Right: Mo Hat — Left: Mamba Hat, Right: Mo Hat

With styles inspired by cigarettes, mohawks, jewels, funky feathers and hair, this collection proves to be one of your most innovative. How does this collection embody your work from archive collections to modern-day?

It’s homage to my past collections, almost a “greatest hits” album. So I don’t know If it’s my most innovative because It’s a collection of all my most innovative hats from throughout the years. Now, people know me more for my commercial things, but my uncommercial hats are what put me on the map for my first 5-10 years.

Let’s talk about the ‘Ciggy’ hat. How did inspiration for this come about?

I was nominated for the CFDA award in 2004, and I didn’t know what hat to wear. I found a dress from this little shop in the lower east side, but it was also an item that was sold at Bergdorf Goodman. It was a pink princess dress; I just needed to come up with a hat to wear. Most everyone at CFDA is very “uptown,” and I’m very much a “downtown” girl, so I was thinking, If I win, I want a kind of “downtown crown.” At the time, we were selling snakeskin cigarettes as pins and such, so I took all the ones that were rejected for production, and I threw them in an ashtray. Swarovski was sponsoring the award, so I asked them if they could send me crystals that look like ash, and that’s how it came to inception.

Which hat has become your favorite from this collection?

I have so many! My first hat, the Maddie, was inspired by a Matisse painting, The Goldfish, so it’s one of my fondest. Also something like the Animal hat, which is just fun in a bucket. Then there’s the Yellow Plume hat; it’s a yellow thorn face cage that was made of 29 different yellow feathers. That was a labor of love because it took so long to make and Ben Stiller wore that one in Zoolander. One of my all-time favorites is the Toast hat. I made it right before going to Paris. While I was there, people were calling me the “Toast of Paris,” and then I went to LA and I was the “Toast of LA,” and then I lost it in the back of a car, but luckily I’m a hat designer and could make more. For this collection, I love every hat for different reasons and occasions.