Famous milliner workshop, opened by Josette DESNUS in 1985 at rue du Faubourg St Honoré in Paris. Madame DESNUS had very small quantity of hat for ready-to-wear sale, but always created individual, luxury and unique hats for her elite clientele. At Tete a Tete, everything was made by hand. She and Barthet were the only milliners who still maintained workshops on the premises. In the basement an assistant stirs a steaming vat, dying tulle to match the exact shade of a client's emeralds. On an upper floor five women sew, embroider and bead. The atelier is crammed with sparterie forms (sparterie is a tropical grass that is starched and pressed on white muslin to make the basic hat form) and rows of finely carved fruitwood molds. Josette, a small but forceful woman, explained the difference between a chapelier and a modiste. The former, normally a maker of men's mass-produced hats, applies heat to shape felt or straw to the wooden mold. The latter starts with sparterie, slowly sculpturing it into an original design. "I am the only modiste in Paris," Josette proclaimed proudly -- but inaccurately. "All the rest are accountants." Josette was the protegee of the legendary Paulette, who reigned over French millinery from the 1950's to the 1980's.