Milliner conquering the world
By Ijeoma Ogwuegbu ijogwuegbu@sunnewsonline.com
Saturday, July 21, 2007

As an international milliner, having one of your hats on parade at the Royal Ascot of England, a major event in the British social calendar, shows that you have indeed arrived on the stage.

To have eight of your hats worn by various guests to the exclusive racing event, however, is the stuff dreams are made of and happens only to the very best. Imagine therefore the delight of Nena Kalu, designer behind Nena Kal Hunter Ltd., one of the country's more exclusive milliners, when this happened to her.

Ascot excitement
" I can't tell you how excited I am to have this happen to me," Kalu said recently about the achievement. " This is the biggest outing for any UK milliner. A lot of people have been designers for years and have not had even one of their hats on display at the Royal Ascot. This is where celebrities and royalty put the most exclusive and most elaborate hats on display. The Queen and other royals attend the racing event. It is like a show of hats as many people even forget about the racing just to see what hats others are wearing. For eight of my hats to be worn by different guests to the event is really a dream come true for me. I'm so excited, I can't explain it to you," she added with a broad smile.
She says one of the greatest benefits of having her hats on display at the Royal Ascot was the amount of press coverage the event gets.
" It's the sort of publicity you can't buy," she enthuses. " These people are interviewed about what designer they are wearing and you get both international print and television buzzing about your creations. It is exciting for me because it is my first outing and hopefully not my last."

Total mistake
Four out of the eight of her hats that were worn to the event were actually the same design, but in different colours. Ironically, she says the hat that became such a hit with the Ascot crowd was actually a mistake.
"You know, it is funny, that hat was a total mistake. It was one of those designs that I made and really did not like. However, I just put it out there. Yet, the British women just loved it. If you ask me why, I will be the first to tell you that I really do not know what they saw in it. They could not seem to stop ordering it. I do not mind at all though. I guess they saw something very beautiful in the mistake I made."
Her success at the Royal Ascot is actually a culmination of years of work, which included the launch of her website, nenakalhunter.com. In fact, many of the orders she now gets come from the website and she now ships to more than European countries, the U.S, Ghana and South Africa.

Throw pillows
She has also started her interior decoration line, especially her line of hand made throw pillows, which she is also exporting. Like that hit hat, going into designing interior decor pieces was also another accidental goldmine.
"I started it as a hobby really. I did not realize I had that kind of talent, in terms of interior decoration until I moved house and decorated my house myself. I made my throws, curtains, designed almost everything inside the house. Then friends, customers who saw it started demanding for the same things for themselves. Therefore, I had to start making them. People have also started ordering those on the Internet as well. Definitely, using the Internet to access practically the whole world for business has really paid off. There is a lot more money to be made that way.”
It has not been all wine and roses though. Like any other Nigerian manufacturer, she has her own headache, the biggest being power supply and issues with manpower.
“Manpower is a real headache for me. I have had to train people to make hats the way that I do but I have found that a lot people are not very patient. The kind of work I do requires a lot patience and detail and that is why I have the kind of quality that I do. When you ask them to do something a certain way, they do it while you are looking and when you look away, they go back to their old way of doing things. I cannot send out hats or throw pillows that are not well made because my customers are usually enlightened people who are well traveled, so they know what a well-made hat should look like. I end up having to do the finishing myself. I cannot deliver hats that are not the very best. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to my work and I need the very best to work with me.”

Love of geometry
Most of Kalu’s designs have a distinctive look. She attributes this to her love of everything geometrical.
“I love to work with geometric lines and shapes, curves, squares, things like that. I base most of my designs on those. For the throw pillows I just put different fabrics together, if it works, I just use them together. I do not like cluttered designs. I prefer simple, straight yet sophisticated and effective. I don’t believe that you have to stick a lot on things to make them look beautiful.”
She acknowledges that the fact of having lived in the U.K for sometime in the past may also have helped her develop an eye for what the international market may like.
“ Most of my designs are very simple. The truth is that, I am playing on the safe side. You have different kinds of people, both the eccentric and the conservative. Luckily, I am able to straddle both sides with my designs. Having lived in the U.K, I noticed that most of the home décor is very simple but beautiful. So I guess that knowledge has helped me.”

No slowing down
Kalu seems to be a bundle of energy that does not know when to stop. On the heels of her Ascot successes, she is preparing to launch herself into yet another venture.
“I now have a new collection, a line of small wedding headpieces which people can wear to complement each other at an event or wedding. I am also setting up my clothing line, which will have a range of T-shirt, handbags and other things. The only reason I slowed down on my lingerie line is that you need far better power supply than we have now to be able to do that. I have to wait until that happens because as it is now, I can’t compete with the Chinese market.”
Where does she get all this energy, you wonder.
“I won’t say I really need energy. When you are talented in design, it does not feel like work. I can work from morning to night and not notice the time passing. My parents call me a workaholic. I never get stressed when I am working on my designs, except maybe when I have too many orders piling up. Apart from that, it is actually an enjoyment for me. I do not feel like I am working. I can go two days without sleep, until my body starts complaining.”
It is definitely this determination and love for what she does that has kept going this long and is bound to keep her working hard, helping her in her quest to straddle whatever world she decides to venture into next.