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"    Photo: Getty Images   Top milliner Stephen Jones has had quite a whirlwind April. Early on in the month he headed to Spain, where he&amp;#039;s mentoring emerging hat and shoe designers at La Roca Village, Barcelona and Las Rozas Village, Madrid as part of Chic Outlet Shopping&amp;#039;s Head Over Heels for Spring campaign. Then, he continued on to Japan, where he spent two and a half weeks teaching students at Musashino Art University. &amp;quot;When I was starting off, I didn&amp;#039;t have any help. [Karl Lagerfeld] was the only designer in Paris who was making hats. So I&amp;#039;m quite pleased to be able to help people,&amp;quot; Jones told ELLE.com yesterday, fresh off the plane from Tokyo. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m always fascinated by what [the students] have to offer, because they&amp;#039;re in their 20s, I&amp;#039;m 56, so their point of view is very different from mine.&amp;quot;   ELLE: You and Philip Treacy are the fashion industry&amp;#039;s two top millinery go-tos, and you&amp;#039;re both U.K.-born. Why do you think it worked out that way? Stephen Jones: I think it&amp;#039;s because we wear hats for weddings here, and for the races. So that whole [millinery] tradition has been kept alive. ELLE: You mention the races\u2014have you ever been to the Kentucky Derby, which is coming up soon? SJ: No, I haven&amp;#039;t, and I really, really want to go. It&amp;#039;s just before the cruise collections in Paris, so I&amp;#039;m going to be in Monaco working on Dior. But I always look at pictures of it. ELLE: Are you excited about The Great Gatsby? It looks like there are so many great headpieces in it.  SJ: I can&amp;#039;t wait to see it. I actually saw some of the sketches that Prada did for the clothes. I think it&amp;#039;s going to be amazing, and a real influence on fashion, too. ELLE: We read that your head is sample size. Do you design on your own head? SJ: Yeah, I always try on things to see if they&amp;#039;re comfortable and if they&amp;#039;re balanced. I never really think, &amp;quot;Do they suit me?&amp;quot; I normally try it on a pretty girl for that. But it&amp;#039;s good to know if the hat&amp;#039;s too heavy on one side and going to fall off. ELLE: Did you hear that John Galliano, who you collaborated with for a long time at Dior, is going to teach at Parsons The New School for Design? SJ: Yeah, I think it&amp;#039;s really great for the students, and they&amp;#039;re lucky. They will really learn a lot from John\u2014the way he creates things and his experience in the fashion business. I think he will learn from them, too. Because that&amp;#039;s the thing I&amp;#039;ve found about teaching, it actually works both ways. ELLE: You&amp;#039;ve worked with a wide range of clients; how is designing for someone like Marc Jacobs different than designing for someone like Beyonc\u00E9, for instance? SJ: It&amp;#039;s the same, really. You have to understand how it&amp;#039;s going to be worn and where it&amp;#039;s going to be worn, why it&amp;#039;s going to be worn. ELLE: Beanies have been super popular in street style recently. Are you seeing any new silhouette emerging for spring?  SJ: The beanie thing really came from the beanies that I did with Raf Simons at Jil Sander, which was for Summer 2012. Certainly those have bred the revival. I think the beanie&amp;#039;s going to be around for a while, just because it&amp;#039;s so easy to wear. I&amp;#039;m seeing a lot of scarves being tied on heads and things like that here in London for spring. Bandanas that have just been knotted around the head. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/accessories/news/a16940/stephen-jones-interview/>