Issue 120 March 2016
Doris Hobbs Emma Brennan Theatrical Headpieces and more... the e-magazine for those who make hats Issue 120 March 2016 Contents: Doris Hobbs 2 How a vintage hat changed a fashion blogger. Hat of the Month 7 A leather and lace racing piece by Emma Brennan. Centre Stage: Securing Theatrical Headpieces 10 Expert advice from Costume Designer Richard St. Clair. Wear a Hat Day 2016 15 Find out how you can support this worthwhile cause. Letter to the Editor 17 A tip for taking accurate measurements. The Back Page 18 Colour advice from the past and how to contact us.
Cover/Back Pages: 1 www.hatalk.com Photos of Doris Hobbs by Rich Fisher The HAT that changed my life by Doris Hobbs
2 www.hatalk.com Doris Hobbs (left) is the creator, editor, writer and model of American fashion and personal style blog Rich in Love Fashion. Known for her vintage flair and festive personal life, Doris connects with her readers through a classic, feminine profile and a silhouette of an era gone by, which she plays off with fabrics, textures and accessories. Her goal is to bring back an era of timeless grace, merging a generation gap by providing the modern day woman with a subtle touch of vintage flair. Not surprisingly, her love of vintage fashion has led her to fully embrace the art of hat wearing.
There’s a sentimental spot in my heart for the classic style of the 1940s. Perhaps it’s due to growing up in a family enriched with a vintage lifestyle, film noir or countless Sunday afternoons spent exploring my grandmother’s well-curated collection of costume jewellery. From these memorable experiences I knew one thing to be true; I’d transform one day and possess such glamour too.
The 1940s was an era that defined a greater sense of style through an array of exquisite dresses, rhinestone jewels, lady daywear gloves and millinery designs. It’s clearly hard to imagine any vintage- inspired ensemble to be complete without a hat: whether it is a small pillbox, cloche, fascinator, wide- brimmed picture hat or an imaginative evening cocktail design.
From the time I was ten years old, I had formed Rich Fisher Rich Image: a resistance to wearing any form of headwear. Throughout my years of adolescence, just the thought of wearing a hat had me distressed. Perhaps it was the image I perceived in the mirror, of a girl I couldn’t recognize.
3 www.hatalk.com Image: Rich Fisher Hat: Coque Millinery
Nonetheless, and with only failed attempts, my dear An heirloom handed down from Justina Andrade to her mother continued to garnish my crown with a decorative grandson Rich Fisher, my life partner and photographer, hat of one form or another. With age, I would privately this vintage hat was stored with a number of other embellish myself with my younger sister’s dance millinery designs that Justina had acquired during her costume fascinators, finding these performing art pieces life. I remember viewing Rich’s face - seeing a sense of to be slightly enthralling. Much later in womanhood, pride as he adjusted and fitted his grandmother’s hat at the age of thirty-three, my style matured and my life to my current day ensemble. This hat, which had found transformed with the placement of a black veiled pillbox refuge for sixty years in a worn Montgomery Ward gift hat dating back to 1956 (pictured on page 2). box, had changed me.
4 www.hatalk.com Image: Rich Fisher Hat: Lady Sharma Hats Image: Rich Fisher Hat: Ruby & June Millinery
5 www.hatalk.com The feeling of wearing that veiled pillbox, which almost overwhelmed me at the time, has become an honouring essence and lasting memory. Justina Andrade and her collection of hats have now found a place not only in my heart, but in a number of publications, including Diablo Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and VRAI Magazine. Over the last three years, a hat has become a daily part of many, if not all, of my garment choices, making each piece a statement in itself.
An iconic image of hat wearing comes from Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945). With a broad- shouldered mink swing coat and matching hat, long dark hair, thick black eyebrows and bold lips, she portrays a sense of style that has continued to stand the test of time. Because of style icons and Hollywood legends such as Joan, hats have become widely accepted today as an art form. A hat is a noticeable accessory with an old saying attached, “If you want to get ahead and get noticed, get a hat.” In 1934, when most men still wore hats, caps, and bowlers, this play on words was paraphrased by the Hat Council and is now included in the Advertising Slogan Hall of Fame.
The way we present ourselves to society is shaped partly by our interaction and sense of style. In an era in which hats are not regularly applied to one’s overall ensemble, I find a hat adorned with feathers or a veil, or covered in exquisite materials, can add a subtle touch to a ladylike silhouette and provide a story worth sharing.
Follow Doris Hobbs’ hat choices and vintage style advice at www.richinlovefashion.com. Rich Fisher Image: Rich Fisher
6 www.hatalk.com Hat of the Month
7 by Emma Brennan www.hatalk.com We love the textural contrast that Australian milliner race hats and bridal headpieces and also offers a range Emma Brennan has achieved by layering metallic of casual hats, children’s headwear and men’s styles. lace over leather... Emma made this hat for herself as she needed something Emma began learning to make hats in February 2011 to wear to the Australian Turf Club’s 2014 Golden Slipper when she enrolled in a millinery course at the Richmond Stakes. Held at Rosehill Gardens in Sydney every March, Campus of the Kangan Institute in Victoria, part of the Golden Slipper is a highlight of the Australian racing Australia’s comprehensive vocational training network calendar and is reputed to be the world’s richest race for of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) providers. She two year old horses. studied at the Institute until June 2013 and graduated with a Certificate IV in Millinery. The design was inspired by Emma’s race outfit - an off- white cotton lace dress with subtle silver flecks through Going on to launch her own label - Emma Brennan it. To create continuity between the dress and the Millinery - in 2012, Emma now works from her home headpiece, Emma opted to work with off-white leather studio in Melbourne’s Moonee Ponds. She specialises in and silver webbed lace.
8 www.hatalk.com To make this hat, Emma first had to block the foundation. She decided to use buckram, known as 20/20 in Australia, which she blocked on a Guy Morse-Brown CB150 beret block. Once the buckram shape was completely dry, and while it was still on the block, she used a combination of steam and water to block the leather over it carefully.
While waiting for the hat to dry, Emma began making the camellias by stiffening a piece of the off-white leather and then cutting out each individual petal. Next, she used her flower making tools to shape the petals and then assembled the flowers and added the pearlised stamens.
Once the buckram and leather shape was fully dry, Emma removed it from the block and wired the edge by hand. She then fitted the lace over the leather, secured it with a tacking stitch and sewed in a petersham head fitting. She attached the leather camellias securely to the hat, arranging them at the back of the headpiece to create a sense of height and overall balance. Finally, Emma finished off the piece by sewing in a handmade lining, some hat elastic and her label.
Emma is pictured here in her Golden Slipper ensemble. This hat took Emma about fourteen hours to make as working with leather is a time consuming process, but the result was definitely worth the effort.
To see more of Emma Brennan’s work, go to www.emmabrennanmillinery.com.
9 www.hatalk.com Centre Stage: Securing Theatrical Headpieces
10 www.hatalk.com If you have ever attempted to make headwear for a theatre production, even the humblest of school plays, you will know that an important part of the design process must involve working out exactly how to keep the headwear attached to the performer’s head, regardless of what happens on stage. I found this out the hard way, when my five-year-old starred as Mary in her school Nativity play. I thought I had done a pretty good job of securing her headscarf, and all was going smoothly, until the ‘Donkey’ decided to take my daughter’s hand and spin her around in an impromptu jig. She burst into laughter, as did the audience, the scarf went flying and Mary went bareheaded for the rest of the night.
According to expert HATalk contributor Richard St. Clair, costume designers often have to “reinvent the wheel” to make headwear work on stage. St. Clair, who is Head of the MFA/BFA Costume Design Programmes at Penn State University in the USA, was faced with a difficult design challenge while overseeing the costumes for the Theatre Department’s 2010 production of Peter Pan. It was agreed that the Indians should wear feathered mohawks (left) - inspired by Alexander McQueen’s final collection of the same year - but these mohawks would have to stay in place during the wild whirling of the Indian’s dance routine and, to make the project even harder, had to be attached to the male actors’ short hair.
11 www.hatalk.com A former Graduate Student was brought in to construct the six headpieces, which were made out of buckram, millinery wire and a mix of feathers. After much brainstorming around the problem of attachment, the costume design team came up with a practical solution.
First of all, the actors were asked to grow their hair as long as possible in the run up to the show. Even with longer locks, however, the men simply did not have enough hair to use only normal hair grips (bobby pins) or combs to hold the pieces on securely. As the mohawks were worn from front to back, rather than from side to side, using a headband was not a viable option either.
Instead, the designers mounted pairs of wig clips onto pieces of elastic and sewed them onto the underside of the buckram base at regular intervals, as shown in these photos. Then, by pulling the elastic taut and digging the clips into the hair at an angle, they were able to get a good enough grip to hold the headpieces firmly on the actors’ heads. For extra security, a few crin (horsehair) loops were also sewn to the buckram. Hair grips could then be threaded through the loops and attached to the hair to create a few extra anchoring points.
With these measures in place, all six feathered headpieces stayed on the Indians’ heads throughout every show.
12 www.hatalk.com While the elastic/wig clip combination was a new idea for Peter Pan, St. Clair tells us that using crin (horsehair) loops is a commonplace practice in theatrical millinery. As shown on this black straw hat which he made for Penn State’s recent production of the musical Titanic, the loops are made by cutting a short length of crin and folding it in half. The loose ends are then gathered into a point and sewn firmly onto the inner petersham headband with a strong thread.
Sewing in a number of loops at key points around the headband will provide plenty of places to secure the hat with hair grips or pins. While the loops may seem quite conspicuous, they will be almost invisible to an audience, especially if the crin is carefully matched to the wearer’s hair or wig.
Unlike in traditional millinery, the way that a theatrical hat or headpiece looks when examined closely is of much less importance than how it looks from a distance. Fine detail and beautiful stitchwork tend to be luxuries that costume designers simply do not have the time or the budget to indulge in. Headwear made for the stage must be practical - it needs to stay in place, no matter what, and it has to be robust. That way, the cast can focus on putting on the best show that they possibly can instead of worrying about losing their headpiece mid-performance.
13 www.hatalk.com Richard St. Clair has been designing professionally for 30 years. He has designed for the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Seattle Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Philadelphia Theatre Company, the Curtis Music Institute and the Arden Theatre Company.
He is the recipient of two Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Costume Design. He designed costumes for the world premiere of Terrence McNally’s Golden Age for the Philadelphia Theatre Company, directed by Austin Pendleton. This production was part of Terrence McNally’s Nights at the Opera performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He designed the world premiere of William Schuman’s A Question of Taste for the Glimmerglass Opera and the American premiere of Phaedra for the Opera Company of Philadelphia. Most recently he designed the costumes for Mother And Sons at the Philadelphia Theatre Company starring Michael Learned.
As Resident Costume Designer/Costume Director for the Opera Company of Philadelphia for 26 years, St. Clair designed for Gian Carlo Menotti, Luciano Pavarotti, Theodore Bikel, James Galway, Judith Jamison, Denyse Graves, Juan Diego Florez, Stephanie Blythe, Nathan Gunn, Christine Goerke and Anna Netrebko.
He also worked as a milliner on the major motion picture Beloved and as an assistant designer on Unbreakable, The Happening, The Mighty Macs, and Paranoia.
St. Clair holds a BA from Penn State University and an MFA from Temple University, both in Theatrical Costume Design. He has taught Costume Design at Stony Brook University, Rutgers University and Philadelphia’s University of the Arts and is currently the Head of MFA/BFA Costume Design at Penn State School of Theatre.
To find out more about Richard St. Clair and Penn State’s prestigious Costume Design Programme, visit theatre.psu.edu.
14 www.hatalk.com 15 www.hatalk.com Stephen Jones Supports Wear a Hat Day The latest celebrity milliner to get behind Brain Tumour Research’s Wear a Hat Day Campaign is Stephen Jones OBE (right). Jones, one of the top hat designers of our day, has created the 2016 Wear a Hat Day Signature Brooch (below) for the UK charity.
“I am thrilled one of my drawings has been transformed into this beautiful multi-coloured and limited-edition brooch for Brain Tumour Research and Wear A Hat Day,” says Jones. “In every situation to me flowers are always inspirational.”
True collector’s items, Wear a Hat Day brooches are limited to a run of 500 each year and come with a Certificate of Authenticity. Previous brooches have been designed by Philip Treacy, Rachel Trevor-Morgan, Vivien Sheriff and Lock & Co.
Brain Tumour Research is asking for a minimum donation of £10 for a Stephen Jones Signature Brooch. To find out how to order one, go to www.braintumourresearch.org.
16 www.hatalk.com Send us your questions and comments! Do Letters to the you have a problem needing a solution? Or information that you’d like to share? Editor... Email us! [email protected]
Question: How can you get an accurate measurement of the inside of a hat - I find that my tape measure is always slipping!
Answer: Sometimes we all feel like we could use an extra pair of hands - especially when trying to take an awkward measurement. A simple tool which can be a real time saver when it comes to taking millinery measurements is adhesive ruler tape, like Peel ‘n Stick from Thermoweb (right). You can stick this tape directly onto the object that you are trying to measure and then remove it when you are finished. As it won’t slip or move, you will be able to get really accurate measurements of difficult to reach or oddly shaped areas. Adhesive tape is commonly used for sewing and should be safe for most fabrics but always check on an inconspicuous section before you begin.
17 www.hatalk.com The Back Page
Vintage Voices... Here’s an excerpt from Gene Allen Martin’s 1921 book Make Your Own Hats, which was published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. Martin, who was the Director of the Domestic Arts Department at the Minneapolis YWCA and a designer, demonstrator and instructor in millinery, had some strong opinions about the hat colours which people should wear. Almost a hundred years on, do you think her maxims still hold true in today’s world of fashion? A girl or woman with auburn hair may wear grays - gray-green, cream color, salmon pink; a touch of henna with gold or orange; mulberry if the eyes are dark. The woman with dark hair and blue or dark eyes may wear any color if the skin is clear. One having dark hair and eyes and a sallow skin may find golden brown, a pale yellow or cream color becoming - possibly a mulberry if just the right depth. A hat with slightly drooping brim faced with some shade of rose will add color to the cheeks. No reds should be worn unless the skin is clear. No shade of purple or heliotrope should be worn by any one having blue eyes - it seems to make the blue paler. Any one having auburn hair, blue eyes, and a clear skin may wear browns, grays, greens, tan, blue, and black. Black should not be worn next the face unless the skin is brilliant. It is, however, very becoming to blondes, and to women whose hair has become quite white. A black hat is almost a necessity in every woman’s wardrobe, and it may always be made becoming by using a facing of some color which is especially becoming to the wearer - black and white is always a smart combination, but very difficult to handle. Do these colour tips still work today? Do you have your own hat colour advice that you’d like to share? Tell us your views on this issue by posting on the HATalk Social News Feed or emailing us at [email protected].
Congratulations to @chloe_haywood_london, winner of our recent #hatalkhatsnap prize draw competition on Instagram. Chloe has won a 1-year subscription to HATalk. Follow @hatalkemag to connect with us on Instagram.
Contact Us! Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or post on our Facebook, Twitter or HATalk Social pages and we’ll be sure to get back to you.
18 www.hatalk.com 19 www.hatalk.com