If you’ve watched the movie Wicked and found yourself staring at the hats as much as at Ariana and Cynthia, surprise: many of those show-stopping sombreros were dreamed up by a Pinoy from Cavite.
Harvy Santos, a Bacoor-born former ballet dancer, now calls London, England home and is one of the most exciting milliners in global fashion.
His love story with costumes started back in the Philippines, when an older sister brought him to rehearsals at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, as Santos happily got “lost” in the wardrobe rooms, running his hands over brocade and sequins.
In the late 1990s, a scholarship with Ballet Philippines and then another in Hong Kong pulled him abroad, where he danced professionally with Hong Kong Ballet for several seasons and quietly started designing outfits and headpieces for productions on the side.
By 2005, Santos had launched his own costume and couture studio, Harvash Creations, in Hong Kong, taking on everything from bespoke stage looks to TV projects.
When his husband’s job brought them to London in 2008, Santos followed his growing obsession with hats: he took a short course with legendary milliner Rose Cory, then studied millinery at Kensington and Chelsea College (now Morley College).
He interned with top names like Noel Stewart and Stephen Jones and even worked in the costume departments of the Royal Ballet and Royal Opera House.
In 2013, after winning The Hat Magazine’s “Hat Designer of the Year,” he finally launched his own label, building a reputation for sculptural, colorful creations that regularly appear in the Royal Ascot style guide and on pop icons like Lady Gaga (remember her pink cowboy hat in Million Reasons?)
Somewhere along the way, a very special fan dropped by: Queen Elizabeth II herself stopped at his exhibition during London Fashion Week in 2018, admiring a leather crown he’d modeled on Queen Victoria’s traveling crown and trading jokes with the former ballet dancer from Cavite.
Santos also keeps his Filipino roots close to his work, using Philippine materials like sinamay and buntal and dreaming of one day sending a modernized salakot down the track at Ascot.
So when Universal tapped him as one of six milliners—and senior milliner—for the Wicked films, it was already more than a decade since he’d gone “hat mad” in London and about eleven years since launching his own label.
For Filipino-Canadians watching from cinemas in Toronto, Vancouver, or beyond, every swoop of brim and swirl of feather on screen is a quiet reminder: a kid from Cavite can dance his way out of the wings, into a London studio, and straight into Hollywood magic.
