Queen Elizabeth was known for going out in style, and most of her outfits included colorful hats. From floral toppers to feather-covered chapeaus, the late Queen Elizabeth favored bold, bright styles. Some of her most famous hats were made by London-based milliner Stella McLaren.

“I've always been a sewer,” McLaren, 73, told Marie Claire in an exclusive interview, revealing that her needlework teacher at school told her she would make a good milliner.

After completing her apprenticeship as a milliner in 1966, she began working for other royal milliners, including Frederick Fox and Philip Somerville, who also worked on Princess Diana's hats. Queen Elizabeth always had two different hatmakers on hand so that she could vary her style, McLaren explains.

When the Somerville business closed in 2008, Queen Elizabeth knocked on McLaren's door. Her personal assistant and senior dresser, Angela Kelly, called and said. I'm panicking.” McLaren replied, and Kelly told her, “Don't,” and suggested she take a job at the palace.

“Before that, there had never been a milliner [on site],” McLaren told “Marie Claire,” and she worked hand-in-hand with Kelly, with Kelly “picking out fabrics and shapes” and the royal milliner “going from there.” It was always a team effort,” McLaren said.

“Often they would just say, ‘Yes, that's lovely,’ but we usually knew before we brought it in [whether the queen would like it or not],” the royal hatter said, noting that Queen Elizabeth “did not like pillboxes” in her later years.

Despite making more hats than McLaren could ever have imagined, the hatter never suffered a disaster with his designs.

“I've never had one blow off my head,” she said.

As for the flowery and feathery ornaments that adorned Queen Elizabeth's hat, McLaren reveals that some of them came from very unexpected sources.

“Angela has a great eye for just picking things up. If we were at IKEA, she would pick out a flower and say, 'I'm going to use this.' They weren't really hat flowers, but we took them apart and did all kinds of things with them."

As well as making the hat, McLaren told “Marie Claire” that she also helped Queen Elizabeth with her dress.

“The queen cut back on her work, so I became a part-time dresser and went to Balmoral, Sandringham, and Windsor,” McLaren said, “and it was a wonderful experience.”

“We became really close,” the dresser added, noting that Queen Elizabeth called her “a little cockney lady,” referring to her London accent.

It was one of the reasons Queen Elizabeth enjoyed having her around. She said, “Queen Elizabeth liked me and Angela. [Queen Elizabeth] used to laugh a lot, really.”

McLaren also worked on special projects such as Prince Philip's sword case and upholstery. He embroidered a silk and velvet chair, shortly before the Queen's death. The Queen was astonished at the workmanship. She was astonished by the work and said, 'What a wonderful job you have done.

When McLaren asked Queen Elizabeth to whom the chair originally belonged, she replied, “Queen Victoria.”

“I'm so obsessed with Queen Victoria that I almost fainted,” McLaren says with a laugh. 'That was all in a day's work.'

In 2023, Milliner, a royal resident, was awarded the Royal Victorian Medal (RVM) for services to the late queen, calling the news “the biggest shock.”

“I was very honored,” McLaren told Marie Claire upon receiving the order from Princess Anne.

More recently, McLaren last visited Balmoral shortly before Queen Elizabeth's death, but was not there when she died.

“It [the job] went away with her,” she said, calling Queen Elizabeth “a big part of my life.”

Although she no longer works for the royal family, McLaren keeps in touch with many former colleagues, including her close friend Angela Kelly and Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.

“She is the most normal person,” McLaren says of Ferguson. “The first person I met was Fred [Fox], and she poked her nose into my workroom. I loved her."

”I loved her.

Recently, McLaren made a special hat and outfit for Little Red, a doll from Ferguson's series of charity picture books, to mark the second anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's passing.

At the end of the day, McLaren told Marie Claire magazine that the late Queen Elizabeth “was always very grateful. She said, 'Thank you for taking care of me.'

“I wanted to say,” McLaren says, “that I would do this job for nothing, let alone get paid for it.”