I have just spent the day doing some research work at Hat Works, Stockport which is always inciteful. As I walked around the museum hunting for a style of hat stretcher I wondered what it was that as a milliner I was looking for in a millinery museum? Remembering back to my first visit to Hat Works when I began making hats 10 years ago, everything held a frisson of surprise and newness, so many things to try to comprehend and be inspired by. When I visit now I tend to look closer and my selection is more concentrated, trying to understand techniques or looking for inspiration to develop an historic technique further and in an appropriate manner for contemporary millinery.
So a question to pose for all of you? What would your ideal millinery museum do for you? What do you want to see inside it? What millinery exhibitions you have seen have inspired you and why? What doesn't work? This is actually the most important..... Please let me know as it would be very useful to assess what a millinery exhibition should encompass.
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| The Trimming Station |
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| Deidre Hawkins hat |
Really interesting blog, keep up the good work x
ReplyDeleteWhat would a millinery museum have? I'd like to see how the hats complimented the dress/coat styles of the era. I'd like an exhibit showing tools and materials that made hats with some how to images and (dream) the chance to touch the materials used. I'd like this museum to have workshops for visitors to make historic hats. I'd like to know things such as why tricorne hats had the sides pinned up or why cloche hats (bell in French) and not wide hats were worn by flappers. It would be neat to see the designers' hats and then what was actually worn every day by ordinary people. I'd like to know the reason behind hats: cowboys used theirs as working tools to carry water, etc., night caps kept the head warm in winter, mob caps may have been used control odor from unwashed hair. Have I said enough or gone way too far into Hat Wonderland -- :).
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