The Alpine Holiday Festival happens each November in rural Benton County, Oregon.The festival is a fund raiser for the Alpine Community Center. This year, we added a vintage hat display to the event. Jeanne, one of the coordinators, took a millinery class and her interest in hats lead to this display. You can't believe the number of people who were fascinated by the hats. Many of them commented that they had an old hat of their mom's or dad's hidden away. Being a wirewrap artist, I love that each of them is handmade and none of them were exactly alike. I remember my mom having a pink hat made to match here dress for my sister's wedding back in the 60's. She also had her shoes died pink. Oh those were the days when people dressed in style.
About half the hats were from my collection. Looking inside them at the festival, I noticed each of them had a label with the name of the designer. Most of them were made in Portland, OR which makes sense since that was my home town. My favorite is the maroonish one on the bottom shelf which was made in Portland by Myrtle. There are ribbons that go around your ears and underneath your hair in the back. I think this Fascinator could totally be worn by one of the witches in Harry Potter. You are lucky I cropped the closeup or you might have thought I had flown in from Hogwarts.
The hat below was made by Jeanne in her millinery class. It is completely hand stitched and the feathers are applied without any glue. There is a real art to making hats and it isn't something that everyone can do. I can't wait until she starts making them and we can sell them in our booth.
Looks like next year we will have even more vintage hats on display. So if you are in the Willamette Valley and want to get a jump on the holidays take a trek to rural America. You'll find great homemade food, quality arts and crafts, good music, a funky fashion show, and a great community of just plain folks.
Photography courtesy of Watchthebirdie
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I look forward to reading your comments so thanks for taking the time to write a little something. Wishing you the best of all possible good. Jan E O