"People make clothes, and sometimes clothes can make people, and sometimes people re-make themselves to suit the clothes and the life they long for. Fashion is masking and social standing and personal fable and art and craft and industry and avocation and technology and instinct. And millinery? A stretch of the human imagination toward the divine laughter of angels… okay, I just love hats. My God, how I love hats."
Euphrosyne said this on her blog the other day, and I found myself stirred. Slightly dumbfounded. Delighted.
And totally embarrassed that this woman ever saw me wearing those jeans with the lace-up rollerskate on the butt. Ok, it was the early 80's, and I was barely out of elementary school, and I really did love those jeans. Enough to wear them twice a week. Which in the early 80's at a firmly middle-class suburban Texas middle school was enough to earn me fashion pariah status. Now, I can look back and say that perhaps that was where my interest in interactive, experimental "outsider" textile arts began . . .
Which brings me back to the hats. I made this hat from a lampshade. I spray painted it, I glued things to it (including a fake bird, fake fruit, and old paintbrushes), and yes, I wore it. For one glorious Solstice Party evening in the late 90's. It was heavy and it made my head hurt, and I felt AMAZING. The photo (touched up with acrylics to bring out the profile of the hat and neutralize the background) doesn't do it justice.
My God, how I love Hats. And you can see more of them here.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
"My God, how I love Hats."
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3 comments:
Oh please. We were better dressed than anyone at that school, and you were the one who gave me the guts to go for it - my dad's jackets, thrift store ties and scarves, Madonna one day and Molly Ringwald the next (it was the 80's, after all). I never would have felt pretty enough to carry any of it off if you hadn't put makeup on me for the first time - I didn't even recognize the face in the mirror.
By high school, yes. Even by late middle school, yes. I had really embraced thrift store shopping by then . . . but 6th grade. Man, 6th grade was a freakin' killer . . . and, hey, I'm glad you felt pretty enough to carry it off! You most definitely were/are!
The Hub and I met in sixth grade English. He thought I was a very small boy.
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