Community
9 July, 2025
Younis awarded at millinery competition
A PORT Campbell milliner has taken home the People’s Choice Award at the Millinery Australia Design Awards for the second year in a row.
Port Campbell resident Sue Younis has been working in millinery for 27 years and created the designer piece following the theme of ‘Celebration’.
Competing with 39 other top Australian milliners, she took home the People’s Choice Award, where the public could vote for their favourite hat of them all.
Coincidentally, Mrs Younis also won the award last year, which was her first year entering.
“Last year I thought, ‘I think I might try this’ – it was the 30th anniversary of the Australian Millinery Association and the theme was ‘Pearl’ and I thought I would have a go,” she said.
“It’s a way of challenging yourself to actually design and make something and the stress was off the Richter for me.
“I came away with the People’s Choice Award.
“This year I thought I was too tired, I’ve had all sorts of things happening and I wasn’t going to go in it, but another milliner friend told me I had three days until applications were closing and it wouldn’t be the same without my work.”
Following the theme of ‘Celebration’ for this year’s Design Awards, Mrs Younis said her family gave her inspiration and the opportunity to make a social comment through her work.
“My eldest daughter suggested the theme and I thought that would be a good one, a social comment,” she said.
“I was surprised there weren’t more hats with a social comment but I think it’s a great way where you can actually make a social comment without intimidating anyone in any way.
“My youngest daughter is in a same-sex relationship and my nephew is also in a same-sex relationship and they’re amazing.
“There’s a lot of people who have different identities that some people accept and other people don’t accept so well.
“For those sorts of people to come out, to say that they are gay, it’s not easy for a lot of people and I want to celebrate it.”
Mrs Younis said another part of the theme was celebrating sustainability, something also important to her when completing her work.
“I want to use what I have. I don’t want to be buying more and more and more, I want to reuse and repurpose,” she said.
“My piece was a celebration of love, pride and people’s choices and using up my off cuts.
“That was really important to me.”
Mrs Younis said she was surprised to have won the People’s Choice Award for the second year in a row, but was grateful for all the support she received from the community.
“To win the People’s Choice again, I was gobsmacked,” she said.
“This community, we all support each other, and I know a lot of people in the community voted, because they’ve let me know.
“I think I might be banned next year though.
“I would be so embarrassed to win it again – that would be three years in a row.”
Mrs Younis said she was inspired to start millinery many years ago when she was a textiles foods teacher.
Wanting to be challenged more, she enrolled in a millinery course at RMIT and began driving to Melbourne one night a week to follow her newfound passion.
“The kids at school gave me the inspiration to make hats and it was something I could do at home but no one warned me how addictive it was for me,” Mrs Younis said.
“It’s a form of engineering, except it’s something you make to put on someone’s head.
“There’re all these different ways you can make a hat or a headpiece stay on someone’s head, and how it suits different faces, different shapes, different sizes and difference designs.
“It’s opened amazing doors which I never knew would happen.”
Mrs Younis is heavily involved in her community, as she was a member of the since disbanded Port Campbell Business and Community Reference Group, and has been a part of the Millinery 4 Recovery auction.
She has donated one of her hats to be auctioned off to raise funds to support small New South Whales towns which have been devastated by floods.
Mrs Younis is looking for more places to sell her hats and has had them available in Wylde Home in Timboon, and is also able to be contacted for bespoke work via email at susan.c.younis@gmail.com.
“There’s no end to learning millinery and I’m still learning,” she said.
“Millinery is a wonderful outlet.
“I only do one-of-a-kind pieces – I would get bored if I was doing mass produced pieces.
“I use all the traditional millinery skills so they’re well-made and they will last.
“If people have a problem with a hat they can always bring it back.”
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