REPORT
Lola Hats usa
www.lolahats.com
Lola Ehrlich, a hat designer with a creative career background, runs a hat studio in Brooklyn, New York. With a team of about 20, they handmake thousands of hats each year using immense amounts of strip plaited straw. Lola makes it clear that straw hats are not about the past but in fact about the future and designing with the interests of the modern hat wearer, be that the sun-conscious busy mom or the traveller on the move. Lola is primarily self-taught. She
new life with its wearer. It has left home, so to speak, and I was just its transporter.” Hat making is a soulful journey for Lucy, and not just about clever design or putting bread on the table. “The best hats are the ones that somehow ask to be made, and if they can elevate the wearer in some way then I am happy.” Lucy is currently interested in creating
new braids out of patchwork and recycled fabrics. Keep your eyes open as Lucy said she will be offering a few courses this year in the UK and abroad.
studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City but found the club of milliners difficult to break into. Although she appreciates the value of millinery as a set of skills that would be lost without being learned and used, she says, perhaps provocatively: “Millinery is antiquated and fussy.” Lola appreciates designs that are simple, and reinforces the idea that a hat is part of a whole. As a hat is worn it develops.
Lola describes hats as like fragrance: while in the bottle it is one thing, but when it is worn it blends with the wearer and develops into something unique.
Lola Ehrlich
A 5-strand raffia
checkerboard and a 7-straw flat/Dunstable plait
Work in progress by Leanne
Tradition and 60 | the hat magazine #93
Three 7-straw flat aka Dunstable plaits. The top one is made by Leanne, middle is a vintage straw plait and the bottom one is a plait of unknown origin
It’s clear that each of these experts who work on hats loves the art. Magic happens when contemporary design integrates fine craftsmanship and materials at all levels of a project. Contemporary design does not mean leaving tradition behind: it involves blending, mixing and exploring the relationship with the past and present to create hats that are relevant for the here and now, while building on the strength of history.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
