The “Hats Heard Round the World” Challenge is Here!

Today’s modern couture hats are without a doubt the purest-existing expression of wearable art, ornaments for the head that are often part jewelry, part sculpture, and are usually one-of-a-kind, painstakingly handmade with love by an actual person or team of people who sit squarely on the wall between artist and artisan. I am so happy to announce that hats are surging back into fashion. For many a true hat enthusiast, hats never went *out* of fashion, but fashion did not seem to agree for a few decades there, starting around 1970 or so.

Nowadays I feel like there is always an occasion for a spectacular hat on every outfit I see in the mags and the shops and on television, a bold statement, but here comes an even bolder one: Society seems just a bit less civilized without the hat as a fixture on women’s heads, as couture hats these days defy and transcend every expectation society once defined for the hat, thanks to trend-setting master milliners who have pushed the couture envelope.

New milliners are popping up worldwide, and millinery classes from old-school milliners are on the rise with feverish demand where the art of the hat is both revealed and discovered.

As part of this blog, I am launching a “Hats Heard Round the World” Challenge to milliners globally for a unique and exciting fashion opportunity. Its goal? To spread the love and enthusiasm and adoration for chic hats and headwear worldwide and reiterate the message that hats are universal in every culture.

Hats selected for the challenge will be featured in the “Hats Heard Round the World” fashion editorial, styled and shot in top couture, and published on the blog. For milliners interested in participating, please email beautyshallsavetheworld@gmail.com for details.

For you, my readers, you’ll meet countless milliners from all over the planet—world-class, award-winning, utterly fabulous milliners, as well as aspiring milliners who are self-taught and have never taken a single class—but all of them have one thread in common: talent. And all of them prove without a doubt that hat-making, or millinery, as it’s known, is not a dying art. In fact for many of these artists, millinery is their entire life and their devotion and passion.

We will travel to Canada to visit with an award-winning milliner and felting expert, Trish Hirschkorn, and see her breathtaking hat made from clay (yes, clay!) that will dazzle you with its utter spectacular-ness! On the opposite side of Canada we’ll stop at the atelier of the versatile artist Maria Curcic, whose love for classic couture and valuable vintage surfaces in her incredible heirloom creations. Maria has one hat in particular that I’m absolutely obsessed with, a topper that would make Scarlet O’Hara green with envy!

We will jet across the world to the Eastern Bloc to Poland, and on to Russia, to meet the gifted milliners Hania Bulczyńska and Svetlana Gulyaeva, respectively, both of whom studied under one of my favorite milliners, a spectacular genius in hats, the great Anya Caliendo. And we will dash off to Israel for two milliners whose couture hats are as different as day and night, and their hats could not be any more so as well! Each milliner’s process is a unique one, and results in unique pieces of wearable art, the anti-thesis of disposable fashion.

Yes, we are taking a virtual tour around the world on the brim of a hat! Australia, Ireland, England, Asia, Italy, France, Belgium and of course the United States are also all on deck! Isn’t it exciting?!?!

Every milliner featured in the Hats Heard Round the World editorial will be interviewed and an article written about him or her. You will examine the designer’s unique creative process, read about their materials, hear about their influences and influencers, and discover perhaps just a bit of what it is that makes them tick.

As part of this series I’ll also teach you how to wear a hat—that is, how to position a hat properly on your head—as well as how to choose the perfect hats for you and your image and your age and face. My good friend from Australia, stellar stylist Lynette Pater will be chiming in on that. Lynette will give some helpful tips on wardrobe styling, accessorizing, and overall execution of a “look” when wearing various styles of hats and headwear, and we will also discuss how to style your makeup and hair with all kinds of various hats, with advice from my friend and celebrity hairstylist, the fashionable Edward Tricomi of the perpetually-chic Warren Tricomi Salon in NYC. And of course I’ll be throwing in my two cents as usual. So stay tuned!

He who works with his hands is a laborer.

He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

~ St. Francis of Assisi

Ciao for now, from your favorite fashionista!

Peace. Love. Beauty.

SHAN

xxx