Category Archives: Observations From The Apprentice

What exactly does “a little more of a hat” mean?

More times than I can count, we get a last minute, “I need some thing for tomorrow, I’m going to a ______.”

There is nothing wrong with a last minute need for a hat, unless of course you call on a day the shop is closed and demand we open it for you (true story). I have these moments too. Believe it or not, as a milliner’s apprentice I even forget until last minute that I need a hat for that wedding, to go with that impossibly coloured dress, which doesn’t look impossibly coloured until you try to put anything other than a vintage purse and pair of vintages shoes with it. Even the milliner herself does it.

Often, there are no difficulties helping our last minute customers find the right thing for their event. Alas, there are always the difficult few. The customers who come in and say that they don’t know what they want but won’t try anything on, exclaim while feigning coy that things are just horrid on them, talk around the phrase “I’d like it if it wasn’t this.” or came in expecting us to have the perfect thing, which is something they can’t explain, and nothing else other than this unspoken mystery will do. Often times they were thinking that they want “a little more of a hat.” I take that to mean something between fascinator or cocktail and full hat. Not so my friends, not so. “A little more of a hat.” seems to be something completely different person to person. Occasionally “a little more of a hat” means that they would actually like a full hat. More often then not it is a cocktail hat that covers at least a third of their head. Then sometimes it is an excuse to not buy anything because said customer is under the impression that we are over priced.
On that note we send them off to Lilliput Hats in Toronto and into Karyn’s more than capable hands. Her work is beautiful, completely different from ours and the last time I was in her shop, started at $150. Which is still pennies for a well made piece of art seeing as Philip Tracy’s average price is more around $1500. But I’ll save the over priced woman’s work rant for another day.

Really what I am getting at here is that instead of asking Meaghan and I for “a little more of a hat” could you, any of you about to say, “I was thinking that I wanted a little more of a hat.” say instead just how much more of a hat you were thinking?

Cheers,
Sara.