Madeline Thornalley on bringing Hurtence’s instinct-led world to LFW

Eight years ago, Madeline Thornalley set out to remake a hat she loved – but with no background in fashion design, it became a pursuit of stubborn trial and error. “It kept going wrong, I kept trying – and now I’m still making hats,” she laughs. All the tinkering and tussling spiralled slowly but surely into an accidental millinery practice under the name Hurtence, through which she creates for both herself and other designers. Now, “the hat’s out of the box”: Thornally has spun “a whole ready-to-wear world” for her fantastical headpieces, unveiled in her debut presentation, The Sharper the Better at London Fashion Week. 

As there was never a fixed plan to become a designer, Thornalley bucked the twisting snakes-and-ladders of the industry to follow a path entirely her own. Her approach to hat making is gut-led and instinctual, playing with material and method through touch and trust. “It’s actually the best thing not to know how to do it,” she says. “I’ve just imagined what it would be, and then it comes out.” Similarly, when she decided to step into clothing, it was never about the prescribed career ladder, but simply responding to the pull that it was time “for the hats to be given their own world,” a living collection of all her personal oddments and curiosities.  

The ready-to-wear collection unfolds much in the same way as the designer’s practice: the pieces were gathered and accumulated until they began to speak to one another. Bags, made from reclaimed car seat leather with a horseshoe as a handle (for good luck, or “for self-defence,” she laughs), came first, then the clothes, and finally the hats – both new creations and old favourites. Waxed cottons, silks, and wools in bold primary colours were the crux of the collection, with Thornalley coating the fabrics using a special wax she formulated herself. “It just has this weird quality that I find quite sexy when it’s straight off the skin,” she tells Dazed, “it warms up when you wear it, so if you take the dress off, it’s still warm from the heat of the body.” 

Like words building into sentences, and then into a story, the 12 looks emanated a theatricality that slipped beyond the materials themselves. Described by Thornalley as “London gear,” form-fitting dresses, subtly askew, were cloaked in just-buttoned coats and streamlined trouser-shirt ensembles were harnessed by suspenders. Each look was designed to capture “the persisting pulse of London that exists nowhere else. The sort of underground, but also the liveliness.” In character, the models walked unhurriedly and assuredly, with that glint of brash confidence endemic to big-city living. 

The world of Hurtence isn’t just material, however: as her debut collection proved, it’s made up of a constellation of friends who tease it into life. The show took place at The Ragged School, run by Zanna, who has also been a mentor figure for Thornalley, pushing her to dream beyond hats. The clamorous set design – a mountain of furniture illuminated by waxed cotton lamps – was created by Jermaine Gallacher; the soundtrack, featuring subtle noise elements like dogs barking and tube sounds, was composed by her brother, Vegyn. When it came to producing the collection, friend and designer Ian Jeffries helped her sew it all together. “My friends really encouraged me,” she reflects, “They were like, ‘Why not just be in the room and take up the whole room and see what happens?’”

Although designing the collection was a lesson in uniformity and repetition, Thornalley doesn’t have huge plans for expansion. “I don’t really know for now, but I’d love to keep making everything as one-offs or short runs,“ she explains. “I like it being small and unique.“ It’s this pure love of creating for the sake of creativity that makes Hurtence, in all its iterations, so enchanting:  like her clothes, the project gathers piece by piece, friend by friend, until it becomes a story all its own. “I’m very lucky to do what I love and with people I love.”