Rod Keenan
Early years and education
Keenan grew up in Great Bend, Kansas; he graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, and he attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and the Parsons School of Design in
Paris,
France.
Career
Keenan is a famously
reclusive New York
Hatmaking, who is well known in fashion circles for re-establishing men’s headwear as a fashion commodity in the early 1990s. Keenan is additionally noted for choosing to locate his design studio in the
Manhattan neighborhood of
Harlem, New York.
Inducted into the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) in 2006, Keenan has spent the past few years expanding his customer base from celebrities and fashion magazines to broader clientele of fashion consumers.
Inspiration
Drawing on sources that are as divergent as the Dadaists, Elsa Schiaparelli,
ancient Egypt, and
Kurt Weill, Keenan maintains a characteristic New York vernacular, while he designs in the finest Italian tradition, and executes his work with British millinery precision.
Clientele
In addition to creating hats for celebrities such as
Elvis Costello, the
Scissor Sisters,
Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake, and
Brad Pitt, among others, Keenan has also designed hats for designers Paul Smith and Dries van Noten. Additionally, Keenan's hat collections can be found in Barneys New York, and
Harvey Nichols in
London,
England.
External links
