Deirdre trained in set and costume design at Central St Martins, and this training informed her work as a designer working in the theatre, where an eye for precision and detail were essential. In 1999 she was awarded a QEST Scholarship to study millinery with Rose Cory, the late Queen Mother’s milliner, and from then on she exhibited and sold her work widely within the UK and abroad.
Her hats have featured in exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Crafts Council, London, amongst others, and she has also received numerous private commissions. Deirdre’s work is also held in permanent collections of the V&A, the Met, the Kyoto Costume Institute, Japan, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA and the Hat Museum, UK. She was a fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Sadly Deirdre passed away in 2025.
