Edwardian Ball Shopping Open Saturday Noon-7pm

The shopping area at the Edwardian Ball is free & open to the public from Noon-7pm on Saturday! I'll be there all afternoon at the Dark Garden booth, with a whole bunch of hats, if you want to stop by.

HON at Edwardian Ball

For those of you attending the Edwardian Ball this weekend, be sure to check out my hats in the Dark Garden Unique Corsetry booth in the shopping area. Also, chanteuse Jill Tracy will be wearing a custom made HON hat onstage on Saturday! If you don't have tickets yet, I believe that there are some still available at Dark Garden...

'Hat Salon' at Dark Garden

The lovely ladies at Dark Garden Unique Corsetry have set aside the upstairs portion of the shop as a hat salon, at least through the Edwardian Ball (January 22-23). They've currently got about 30 of my hats on display! Here are photos of a few of the newest (more photos coming soon).

Sherlock Holmes 2009: A Hat Focused Review

The hats in the new Sherlock Holmes movie were, overall, fantastic. Whoever made them did a great job of distressing the men's hats to look like they'd actually been worn. My husband, who is even more of a men's hat fanatic than I am, thought that some of them looked more like costume hats (bad material, not finished correctly, etc.) than real, but I didn't notice at the time, I'm going to see it again to see if I can spot the ones he's talking about. Of course, for period pictures where they have to have lots of hats for extras etc. they'll usually have the people in the background wearing cheaper costume hats, but if done well you shouldn't notice when watching the film.

Apparently they got all of the hats for Holmes at Christy's. The fedora with a wide brim and edging that Holmes wears in the second half is probably not quite right for the time period (it struck me as more of an Edwardian or 20s style, rather than Victorian- it's too soft and the brim is too wide for earlier street wear), but I swooned over it and have been obsessed with it since.


I was totally inspired and have been busily playing with edging on my own hats, and some new shapes, more on what comes out of my musings in future postings.

On the other hand, Irene Adler's hats were hit and miss. I found the tall hat with one side flipped up, covered in a mass of silk flowers, nauseating.

But that's just me, I can't stand overdecorated, overly feminine styles, she looked like a parade float in it. Even for the period, the amount of flowers seemed excessive, with little thought to composition, it was just lumpy. The shape of the hat underneath is pretty standard for the 1880s and was great but it just had too much junk on it. The next hat she wore was a FANTASTIC bowler, though, which made me feel better. Couldn't find a photo of it, though, sorry, you'll just have to watch the movie to see it.


The other hats worn by main male characters were quite good, including felt top hats, John Bulls and bowlers. I didn't see any silk plush hats, though, which would have been around...

I'll have to agree with others who have commented on the movie, they did seem to mix decades rather freely, but really, it's an action movie, a romp, so I wasn't feeling super critical during. It was fun to watch, and it gave me some good material to chew on.

Edwardian Ball Hat Trunk Show at Dark Garden - Jan 13

In honor of the Edwardian Ball, coming up on January 22-23, Dark Garden Unique Corsetry is hosting a trunk show of ladies hats and accessories on Wednesday January 13 from 6-9pm. Several different milliners will be showing their work, including myself, Topsy Turvey, The Indra Original Millinery, Audra Jean Hats and Accessories, Hey Sailor, and Cicamica. Also on sale will be a wide selection of everything nice to wear to the Ball, as per usual at DG.

Here are photos of a few of the hats I'll have at the show. I hope to see you there!

Cocktail hats!

Here are photos of a group of cocktail hats that are now on sale at ADS Hats. Starting in February, I'll dive into this style in earnest, expanding the range of colors and trims, including bridal. For more photos of these hats, see my flickr page.

Two Toppers

Here are another two recently completed hats. Both of these sold right away at Dark Garden, but I'm furiously making a slew of similar and new styles for my upcoming trunk show there, later this month. Stay tuned for more info.