Frederick Fox: royal milliner who brimmed with enthusiasm As each year approached its close, a sizeable batch of Christmas hampers would make its way to Luton, long the centre of British hatmaking. The consignment was destined for those in the industrial town north of London who had toiled in a trade blighted by half a century of remorseless decline. It did not even take the rise of China to undercut domestic production. For both sexes and across most of the class spectrum, conventional headgear had already become an optional extra. Yet the high end of the market retained vigour, allowing some Lutonian straw weavers, feather dyers and the like to cling on by supplying the capital's sprinkling of hat ateliers and the backstreet workshops of younger aspirants who sought to inherit their place. So it was fitting that none other than the Queen's own milliner, the New Bond Street-based Frederick Fox, led the annual effort to deliver festive cheer to the mainly female workers and their predecessors. He did so on behalf of London's Worshipful Company of Feltmakers, where he was a liveryman. Fox, who has died aged 82, "often personally rang milliners and designers to persuade them to donate - this is how I first spoke to him," says Denise Innes-Spencer, founder of the British School of Millinery. Likewise he was a great supporter of new and up-and-coming milliners, for whom he provided work experience. One such pupil was Stephen Jones, who told Vogue magazine that the grand figure "dressed in his tie, pearl cufflinks and wearing a hint of eyeliner" had taught him the "importance of working through a mirror with a client, sitting behind the client - like a hairdresser - and working out what they want." The secret to Fox's popularity? His hats had balance and they were never too heavy. Women could just forget about them once they put one on," Jones said. At times, Fox was making the Queen just about a hat a month, earning him a royal warrant in 1974 that lapsed only on his retirement a decade ago. She ordered about 350 in all and made him a lieutenant in the Royal Victorian Order, an honour in her personal gift. Other Windsors were customers too; in the 1980s the run of wide-brimmed "flying saucer" hats he fashioned for the Princess of Wales framed Diana's face as nothing else. His creations emerged from a studio near that of Murray Arbeid, an evening wear designer and his life partner for more than half a century. The pair settled in Suffolk. Arbeid, who died in 2011, had also been able to count Diana as a client. Frederick Donald Fox was born on April 2 1931 in the Riverina agricultural region of New South Wales. Survivors include at least one of his five elder sisters. The family, whom he visited regularly, dubbed him their "hero prince." Some time after moving to London in his late 20s and meeting Arbeid, he was introduced to the palace by Hardy Amies; his initial assignment was to make hats to go with outfits the dress designer was creating for the monarch. She has very good, even proportions and - better than that - she goes places. There's a hat every day," Fox enthused in a BBC discussion with Yvette Jelfs, herself a milliner, ahead of his retirement. As Ms Jelfs recalls, the studio she first visited about 30 years ago "was always a happy place - no pressure, very calm." That may have been because Fox was so confident about the power of hats, telling her simply: "They change the person." Fox's clientele extended to an array of prominent women from Hillary Clinton to Joan Collins. He is also credited with the revival of the fascinator, an often equally elaborate yet smaller-scale creation that brought a fresh headdress option to women in an increasingly bareheaded era. He had a well-developed sense both of fun and of the futuristic, having worked alongside Amies in the late 1960s on costumes for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey . The egg-shaped white helmets with chin strap worn in the film by the Moon shuttle stewardesses were Fox's. The three men collaborated well because they were all perfectionists, the milliner reminisced recently. Whatever the requirements, the ever energetic Fox was as meticulous in his attention to the practicalities as he was to quality and inventiveness. Above all, a creation for the Queen should neither obscure the public's view of their monarch nor require her to devote a hand to holding it in place against the wind. It also needed to allow her to get into and out of a car with ease. For the rest, the possibilities were endless. Whether a society figure's desired look for an event was - he reeled off a few options - cowboyish, seductive, glamorous or low-key, the answer was reassuringly the same: "You can be anything in a hat."