Hat Exhibit Opens with a Milliner’s Ball
Hats follow form and function. They provide protection, a method for identifying the wearer, and they provide the perfect opportunity for a character change. As an art form, they create the opportunity for the wearer to be whoever they want to be.
At the opening reception for the HATtitude exhibit on Sunday, Feb. 9, the hats worn by the guests were as exciting as the hats on display and if like Janet Langsam, executive director for ArtsWestchester, you were able to model several styles, then you might have been able to play many roles.
The exhibition takes up two floors of ArtsWestchester’s main gallery at 31 Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains. There is a milliner’s workroom on display and a study of hats as they developed over time through many cultures and as a modern fashion statement.
This show is entertaining and educational for both women and men, because as a fashion statement, it is often through the wearing of a hat that a gentleman can express his inner self most freely.
The curator for the exhibit is Judith Schwartz. In a recent interview with the Examiner Schwartz, who is a professor at New York University, explained that she originally ran craft classes, working with fiber, metal and glass. In this art area she began curating shows and then writing books. Five years ago she curated a show for ArtsWestchester called All Fired Up, Confrontational Clay.
“About 15 years ago I began looking for another art form,” Schwartz said. “I decided to look into the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and learned about their milliners certificate program. It did not take me long to see the similarity between pots and hats. They were both functional and offered the perfect opportunity for surface decoration that required the precision of detail.”
Schwartz says she loves the search for new and unique materials. For cloth, she will travel to Paris to seek out printed felts and to Turkey for silks, and Korea for materials with embroidered symbols.
Because of her extensive travels, Schwartz has an extensive hat collection and at least 30 of the hats in the show featuring over 150 different designs come from around the world.
There is a rice paddy hat, a one-year-old boys hat from Korea, Peruvian hats, her mother’s nurse’s cap and her father’s firefighter hat.
Schwartz said she is particularly pleased to have been able to honor her parents in this way.
The show mixes vintage with contemporary styles. “The vintage designs hold up very well today,” Schwartz contends, noting that this show opens right before Fashion Week in New York City, giving the whole environment of the event a special twist.
To pull the show together, Schwartz worked with the Milliners Guild of New York and students and teachers from FIT.
One exhibitor, Janet Sikirica of Dobbs Ferry, has two hats in the show. She specializes in felting, creating her own felt from beaver and rabbit hairs.
For Sikirica, millinery is something she can do with her hands. Having grown up on military bases in Germany with a mother who made hats, Sikirica seeks to find the materials she used to see her mother use. If she can’t find the materials she wants, Sikirica will roll her own silk flowers, she told the Examiner in an interview.
The hats on exhibit at HATtitude are for sale. There is also an area where guests can try on different hats to determine which styles best suit their fancy.
“Hats make a statement. They are a wonderful art form,” Schwartz says. “I would like to begin working with materials for hats that fold for our contemporary sustainable lifestyles and hats made with new and recycled materials.
To find out more about the HATtitude exhibition visit www.artswestchester.org where you will find a schedule of seminars and workshops and exhibit hours.
