Pearls and Swine and Hats by Leko

I've always loved hats. When I was a kid growing up, I had a collection of fancy hats that I had hanging on my wall. (I kid you not). When I was around 16-17 I started teaching myself how to mold and create hats for my work as a living historian. This year for my birthday I asked my parents to get me a few hat forms from the wholesale millinery company Hats by Leko. I was super excited to pick out my hat frames and went with the following;

A pancake hat  frame(something I've wanted since I saw Tori Amos wear one at a concert)

A 'flapper' hat (cloche) as I really love them.

 A tear-shaped fascinator.

And finally for my Regency reenactments a twisted seagrass hood,

that can be blocked to make the famous poke bonnet Kate Winslet wore in Sense and Sensibility.

So after getting these amazing frames I began to shop the web for some inspiration and I discovered an amazing company called Pearls and Swine.

She makes fantasy hats and who doesn't want to live in a fantasy?

So like most people, I liked these two company's on facebook and lo and behold, a week later Pearls and Swine did a drawing/giveaway. I entered and today the winners were announced and I won! I'm so excited as I've never actually won anything from any giveaway and I really love this company. The amazing and talented woman behind these amazing hats has also decided to do monthly giveaways so you all need to check her out!

Links:

Hats by Leko
Hats by Leko on facebook

Pearls and Swine
Pearls and Swine on facebook

I'm so excited I could hug myself! (and if you knew how little I like hugs you'd probably realize what a big deal that is)





Fashion Icon: Tori Amos

I've been trying to upload a video on how to tie a Turban for the past several days with zero luck. Something fishy going on with Blogger I guess. So to tie everyone over until I can get the damned thing up and going I'm going to finally start on my Fashion Icon pieces. I've collected a huge group of fashion icons and basically just picked one at random so without further adieu...





I was first drawn to Tori Amos in 2004 by her music. But after recently seeing a live performance where she wore this AMAZING hat, I became drawn to her fashion choices.




Tori is normally drawn to a neuteral color palette, and no one can accuse her of going off her color wheel. She sticks with pale creams, light grays, pale peachy pinks, and warm browns and earthy greens.

























While her colors are normally subdued her accessories make bold statements and are show pieces.

Millinery

One of the first things I learned how to do was to make hats. Primarily Regency Bonnets. I mainly use straw as a base because, its cheap, its natural and it's moldable. I've done historical Reenactments since I was about 15 so I have a lot of hats that I've made and I will basically load you all down with pictures of hats today.

First hat is Anna. She's made with a straw base, black satin, green satin ribbon and green plume.





The next hat is Elinor, she has gold crown and a blue satin ribbon.





Emma is a white cotton bonnet.





Fanny was the most difficult hat for me to make because I was given this really big black bonnet that I literally tore apart and then re-sewed by hand the straw in the form I wanted it. So it took a lot of time and was in pieces for about a year.





I also wanted to show you that the brim is folded in the back and is not attached to the crown.



Kitty appears to be a simple hat. She used to be one of those large brimmed hats but I cut the back out of her hat to make her into a bonnet.




Lady Hamilton is one of my favorite hats. She has a black velvet crown, a black lace tie and black ostrich plume. And again the brim in the back is molded up so there is nothing holding it up.





Next is Lizzy which was probably the first bonnet I ever made. She's taken a lot of wear, expecially recently when I let my 8 year old sister wear her out. She is in sad need of repair but I will probably wait until the next time I am reenacting to do that.





Lucy is a more recent bonnet and I also did a simple how-to make her. I didn't do any molding with her because she had the perfect shape already.




Marianne is my all time favorite hat! I love her so much and you can probably see why.







And last but not least is Marie. She's an earlier styled hat but I love her all the same. She's so bright and vibrant! I love wearing her in the fall.






Ok so there aren't any hats in this scene but it is my favorite scene from Sense and Sensibility. If you haven't seen the movie then check it out. (I made a reproduction of the dress Kate Winslet is wearing in this scene also)