Thoroughly Modern Milliner, LLC

In the Year of our Lord, Nineteen-Hundred-Eighty-Five, I won
first prize in my second grade Easter bonnet contest. It was a glorious
confection (literally) featuring Peeps, cotton candy, and chocolate robin’s
eggs perched on a paper plate base with a tulle ribbon to tie under one’s chin. I even made a hat for the peep. Alas, all photos of this creation have
disappeared, and I am left only with the sad memories of it attracting roaches to Ms. Betty’s classroom, although in writing this, it may also have been the private stash of booze and cookies in her desk.

My husband was speaking to a shop owner in Louisville, Kentucky some thirty years later. The owner looked me up and down and told me to submit drawings of my work and she’d consider hiring me to make hats. I agreed and tried not to appear as bewildered as I felt.

By the time the weekend was over, I had almost fifty pages of ideas and virtually no sleep. For the first time in my life, I loved what I was doing. I had my first Kentucky Derby client that Monday. She was a friend from my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, who was headed to the Derby with her boyfriend. She wanted a custom piece of millinery to set her apart from the crowd. I happily—and gratefully—obliged. At the end of the weekend, her boyfriend proposed.

Hats blend elegance and function. The right hat can take an unremarkable outfit and make it extraordinary. My work as a milliner allows me to explore color and texture. I get to play with peacock eyes and pheasant tails and yards of luxuriant silk. Each hat gives me unalloyed joy. The materials are really the boss. I just try to get them to sit still once they've made up their collective minds where they're supposed to be. It's maddening. It's wonderful. It's magic.