Albertus Quartus Swanepoel, the South African-born milliner and recipient of the 2008 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund runner-up award, has died. A hands-on maker, he was a graduate of the University of Pretoria, where he studied graphic design. He established and had great success with his own clothing line back home before trading the “stiflingly conservativ[ism]” (as his website puts it) of his home country for the heady freedom that is the eternal promise of New York.
Swanepoel arrived in the city in 1989, two years after the crash, to work for a brand. Fate had other plans, and he started working as a glove maker. “To supplement that line during the warmer months,” Vogue later reported, “he took millinery classes at FIT (he trained with Janine Galimard, who had worked with Balenciaga and the famous New York milliner Tatiana du Plessix).” In 2006 he established his namesake company and was soon working with designers, which he continued to do through fall 2024. “I cherished working with Albertus. He created the most extraordinary hats for us season after season. I really felt he became an important part of each collection,” said Adam Lippes. Swanepoel’s hats sold widely, including at Ikram in Chicago. “Albertus made hats that were perfectly and technically designed but that have style and humor and elegance, which speaks to the kind of human he was,” said Ikram Goldman.
Hats and gloves are accessories that went from necessary to discretionary; yet Swanepoel’s creations deserved, and got the spotlight, while the smiling and bearded designer stayed in the wings. Quiet he was, but not unseen by any means; his work was included in the Victoria Albert Museum’s 2009 exhibition, “Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones.” Swanepoel, who also designed for stage and film, could easily conjure vintage-looking creations, but there was no room for dustiness in his view—see the long, arc-brimmed hat he created for Nicki Minaj’s December 2023 Vogue cover story. “I honor the great craft of millinery and make it relevant for today,” Swanepoel wrote. “It’s about being handmade (not homemade), witty (not funny) and nowadays (not nostalgic),” he said in an interview with Pnina Fenster. Those values now live on in Swanepoel’s work.
Scroll right to see Albertus Swanepoel’s designs for runway.
Generosity is another aspect of his legacy; the milliner made the topper used in The Golden Hat: Talking Back to Autism, a book by Kate Winslet and Margret Ericsdottir, and he also crafted custom creations for the orchestras that performed at past Met Galas. “Albertus is well-known as ‘fashion’s favorite milliner,’ and when we had the chance to work closely alongside one another during the 2008 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, he fast became my favorite human as well,” writes Meredith Melling. “His designs were both creative and exacting in technique, which made him a go-to collaborator for the top fashion houses and stylists, but what I will remember most about Albertus is the way he made me feel. He was so kind and generous of heart. When I would call him about a work matter, he would always first ask about Eloise (my young daughter). It was important to him to have that personal connection as well as the professional one. In an industry of breeze-by double kisses, Albertus was a big, warm embrace.”
See Albertus Swanepoel’s work in Vogue.
