Booked up till 3/15

I'm officially not taking any new custom orders until mid-March. Fully booked until then.

New Hat Style: Yvette

Inspired by the quirky, asymmetrical 'doll' hats popular just before and during World War II, this slightly mini top hat shape is shorter on one side and taller on the other, with the brim canted at the opposite angle, and the crown tilts forward like a little Alice in Wonderland teacake about to topple over.


I made this sample in a gorgeous charcoal gray fur felt with black and gray ribbon trim.


Dressed up with peacock sword feathers, dyed to match the felt and curled into spirals.


I've been collecting vintage hats for almost 25 years and my all-time favorite was made by a Parisian Milliner named Yvette Delort: a little late-1930s 'doll' top hat that is asymmetrical, has a ruched silk lining and a silk plush exterior (rare for the period), and is entirely hand-sewn. This hat has seen better days, is a bit squashed and rubbed around the edges, but it's my Velveteen Rabbit of hats: a little pal, my millinery mascot, bursting with personality. If my house was burning down, it's one of maybe 10 things I would try to grab on my way out the door. The more I learn about hat making and the more I look at this hat, the details and fine workmanship that went into it, the more I'm convinced that the person who designed it was a genius.

Here's a photo of the lovely young Mlle. Delort looking gorgeous wearing one of her own creations, circa 1931.


Yvette Delort opened her shop in Paris in 1930, and there are a handful of references to her in the fashion magazine L'officiel de le Mode from the 1930s. I suspect that she probably was working in someone else's millinery shop before that, given the Victorian or Edwardian characteristics of the hat (the way the lining is sewn together, the materials chosen, etc.), she obviously learned the trade and traditional techniques from other milliners of long standing. She was clearly still working through the 1930s-- my hat's shape is spot-on for the particular style of 'doll hats' that were popular right before the war-- but as yet, I have found no trace of Yvette Delort after the late 1930s. Perhaps she was one of the many French fashion workers who closed up shop at the start of the German occupation in 1940, and like a large number of them, wasn't able to recover enough financially to resume her business after the war was over.

So, I wanted to create a hat inspired by my little vintage favorite and the lady who made it, and turned to my custom hat block maker, Owen Morse Brown at Guy Morse Brown Hat Blocks, to design a set of blocks in the same vein. As usual, GMB came through for me with a fantastic work of art. Owen is as talented as all get-out. The 'Yvette' is not an exact copy of the vintage Delort hat, but an homage to it. I'm looking forward to experimenting with the 'Yvette' blocks to make hats in lots of colors and different types of felt (I'm planning one for myself in pea-green for daywear). While it is still a mini hat, it's a bit larger (in terms of head size) that the 'Belle Epoch' mini top hat that's been my best seller, and only half as tall. It should work better as a cross-over day-to-night hat than some of my other, more costume-y styles.

More photos coming soon, it looks even more striking in shiny long-napped 'beaver' felt!

ADS Hats has the charcoal gray one pictured in stock, and Dark Garden has one in black long-napped fur felt with black trim for sale right now.

Profile in Mission Local

Mission Local just posted a great profile of my friend Elina Tachkova, milliner and proprietress of Alternative Design Studio / ADS Hats. I retail at ADS-- House of Nines Design is mentioned in the article, and there are several photos of my hats in the slideshow.

Thanks, Elina!

There is nobody cooler than Grace Jones

Been thinking a lot about Grace Jones lately. Unlike so many of the empty 'celebrities' of today, who are famous for being famous, which is nothing other than their eagerness to expose themselves in public, Grace Jones is famous for being herself. And herself is more than enough to merit it. She is a musician, an actress, a model, and most of all, some kind of force of nature. She has mystery and is totally fierce. She's uncanny, and you don't really want to meet her in a dark alley. Seeing photos of her makes me feel a little bit of fear for my personal safety.












She seems completely fearless. It always impresses me that regardless of how much she is photographed with her clothes off, she never looks naked. She looks like she has just unencumbered herself from the inconvenience of clothing so that she can even more easily kick your ass.





As much as I think it's great that Lady Gaga plays dress-up, she'll never be this stone-cold amazing. Seeing photos of Lady Gaga, it's clear that she has a crack team of stylists on call 24/7 to do these things to her. The clothes are wearing her. She's transformed, but, like with artist Cindy Sherman, I'm always aware that there is a normal girl underneath. Speaking as a normal girl who also likes to dress up, that is great, and a feat in itself. On the other hand, Grace Jones is usually wearing some kind of crazy getup, but it's her force of personality that blasts you in the face. The outfit is just what she happened to be wearing when she stepped off her space ship to conquer the planet.

Spring / Summer 2011 Ready-to-Wear

I'm loving these looks from the *first* solo collection by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen (McQueen's assistant for 15 years before his death last year).




They reminded me of these outfits from past McQueen shows.

Alexander McQueen, Fall/Winter 2006

I think about this outfit a lot. That entire show, titled 'The Widows of Culloden', is my all-time favorite McQueen Collection. See the video here.

Alexander McQueen, Fall / Winter 2010


She's pulled together influences from a lot of McQueen's past work, including his recurring bird motifs, the padded hips, and the Atlantis theme from Spring/Summer 2010 RTW. I have to agree with some of the fashion reviews I've been reading, she has softened the house's style around the edges. But I don't like that, really. I'll miss his perfectly sculpted Grace Jones-esque bodices and sharp tailoring. And the FW2010 hair and makeup are totally bland. Why the hippie braids?

See the rest of the show here. And, there are high-quality videos of runway shows going back to 2002, on the Alexander McQueen website.

I'm NOT loving anything from my other usual favorites from the Spring / Summer Ready-to-Wear 2011 collections, except for Dior's 1940s South Pacific-inspired collection.
Going against the trend of the last few years, there are not very many hats in these collections, except for these bland, identical Gilligan hats on Dior.

Couture is always more interesting anyway, and more chock-full of hats. Those shows are coming up at the end of January, so there is always hope for the future.

Cockney Pearly Experiment #1

Here are photos of my first Cockney Pearly hat experiment. It's one-of-a-kind, because I only had one of these beautiful mother of pearl brooches. On sale now at Dark Garden in San Francisco.






And, as a bonus, here are some videos of real live Cockney Pearlies.

Venice Costume Update

Taking this week off of work on hats (mostly) to sew costumes for my upcoming trip to Venice for Carnavale, my husband John and I are going to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. We met at a Halloween party, and married on Halloween in full costume, so it seems appropriate to go to the granddaddy of all dress-up for the occasion. Last May, we decided we were going to go to Carnavale in 2011, and started out with so many plans- a new totally complicated historical costume for every day! For two weeks! Plans which, over the last few months, have been whittled down to a smaller number of hopefully more attainable goals. If we could get one really good outfit completed for each of us, I would be thrilled, but hopefully we'll have two or three. We're making this outfit for my husband.



The only differences in the finished outfit will be the hat (he probably wants a bicorn instead), and that the jacket will be a cut-away rather than double-breasted. I've been struggling with the jacket for months and hope to finish it this week. I took a tailoring class this fall to brush up on the subject, and this was my class project, which unfortunately wasn't done by the end of term. It's coming together nicely but slow, slow, slow. John is working on the black waistcoat and breeches.

To take some of the pressure off, I've hired my friends at Dark Garden to make parts of my outfits, so I have more time to finish this red jacket and make lots of skirts. They are making the following two bodices, with integrated corsets, using the basic corset / bodice shape from their fantastic Dollymop line.

This is everybody's dream jacket from the Kyoto Costume Institute. It gets copied a lot, but I still love it. We're doing it with a smaller collar, and the grain lines will be a little bit different because of the way the corset is pieced together, but it will be otherwise pretty much the same.



I'm also making a matching skirt. I haven't decided yet whether to have the skirt meet in the center front, or have a cut-away front with a white underskirt showing. I bought a truckload of this fabric from Renaissance Fabrics a while back, so I might have enough for both. I might also wear it with a contrasting skirt, like black or ivory wool. We're bringing a lot of separates to mix and match.

Dark Garden is also making me a plaid corset with matching caged sleeves, modeled on the bodice in this portrait of Flora MacDonald.



It will be made in Wallace tartan.



18th century clothes looks insanely great in plaid. The skirt, the underlay in the sleeves, and the bows down the front will all be in a mustardy yellow silk taffeta that matches the yellow stripe in the plaid. I think I need a huge crazy wig with lots of flowers in it to go with it...

I think I also need this jacket (who doesn't?), in black, but I'm not sure where the time will come from, so it's on my 'maybe' list. We leave to go to Venice on February 23.



But, I do need a black outfit for this classic Carnavale 'domino' look, so I might have to squeeze that jacket into the schedule somehow. John's project for the week is to make us some black cloaks.




We have a few other ideas, including some upgrades to our circus outfits, and one of the parties we're attending has a Baroque Manga theme- a Japanese anime take on the 18th century. For that one, I'm thinking red tabbed corset and frilly white shirt, with a red sparkly panniers (borrowed from my friend Autumn) worn over bloomers. And a huge wig, of course. For a 'spring flowers' party we also might attend, I was thinking about shaking it up by going as screwed up drag queen flower children, like this.



This idea was also inspired by the silly dance club scene in one of my all-time favorite movies, Danger Diabolik.



Sorry I don't have great 'in process' photos of all our projects, but that would cut into sewing time, which we don't have enough of to begin with. Speaking of which, it's time to go back to work now. That jacket isn't going to sew itself (unfortunately). Lots of photos after the trip, though.