Color Brides

I love when brides choose *color* for their wedding outfits, it's so much fun. (Mine was lipstick red.) I've had custom requests for hats and hair pieces in a range of colors and styles, including a charcoal gray pirate tricorn and a brown steampunk mini top hat. Here's one of my favorites. These photos were sent to me by the bride, who is really beautiful, tall, has bright red hair, and wore a purple dress with a big rhinestone clasp on it. She looked gorgeous!

Coast to coast to coast to coast

I'm finishing up several hats for a great lady in Australia today. And the other day I sold a hat to someone in France. I've also sent hats to people all over the US, and to the UK and Canada. I need to make one of those maps with little pins in it to show House of Nines' international reach...

Jill Tracy / David J video

Everybody's favorite chanteuse, Jill Tracy, just let me know that she'll be wearing a House of Nines Design custom hat in her upcoming video with musician David J, of the legendary bands Bauhaus, Tones On Tail, and Love and Rockets. I'm all aflutter.

I love playing the '6 Degrees of Separation' game. Turns out Juliet Landau will be in the video as well (she played Drusilla on Buffy the Vampire Slayer). So, that means I'm only a couple/few degrees from all of these musicians whose music I love, the whole Joss Whedon clan, plus Gerry Anderson's 1960s sci-fi empire: Juliet's parents were in Space 1999. Oh! And they were also on the original Mission Impossible TV show.

An aside: did anybody else notice a similarity between the recent Leonardo DiCaprio movie Inception and Mission Impossible? Joseph Gordon-Levitt made the greatest Barney (the 'electronics expert' who was on every episode, and was the secret genius behind every mission): he was tough, no-nonsense, unflappable, and just took care of business, even when flying around weightless. Fantastic.


I'll send an update once the video is out!

This Just Arrived: Albino Peacock Feathers

Just received a huge shipment of rare and beautiful white albino peacock feathers.



They look great on bridal hats!



Peacock feathers are 'harvested' without harming the birds, when they molt (shed their feathers in preparation for growing new ones) naturally, once per year.



As you can imagine, albino peacocks are rare. Rarer still are the number of people who own one who are willing to go through the trouble of collecting and selling their molted feathers. Being a materials geek, I love anything gorgeous and unusual, so for the last two molting seasons, I have bought almost all of the albino peacock feathers available on the open market.

Fall Sneak Preview

My first batch of fall ladies hats are now on sale at ADS Hats and Dark Garden in San Francisco. Frilly, feathery cocktail hats, and super swank new top hat and bowler styles coming up!

Rock N' Roll Bride

I got a nice mention in Rock N' Roll Bride, for the work I did on Conor & Caroline's wedding.





Thanks to photographer Julio Fonyat for the fantastic photos!! See the rest here.

Sweatbands have arrived

Received my super luxe new sweatbands today. I swooned! Half in black, half in a dark cinnamon brown, and printed with my logo in silver foil. They're gorgeous.

Finished two mens hat samples tonight, more tomorrow. Photos next week!