Hatwork

[kate_schaefer]

Blood Red Roses Hat #1, photograph by Luke McGuff

I've been making hats for a few years now, with increasing seriousness, insofar as one can be serious about something as frivolous as cocktail hats. In the past year, my forays into seriousness have included:

• getting a minimal but elegant website online
• getting a business license
• attempting to sell hats at a house show last December (I sold no hats at that event, but I did sell quite a few scarves and evening wraps)
• committing to show at the same house this coming December
• sending the sales tax I collected to the state
• being on panels at Potlatch and Wiscon about our art and the science and process behind said art with Laurie Toby Edison and Elise Matthesen
• taking orders for two custom hats which I have still to complete but which I have finally begun
• attending hat camp
• joining the Millinery Artisan Guild
• taking an order for one custom hat which I made and delivered within three weeks of the initial query
• offering to make a headdress for my niece's upcoming wedding
• volunteering to make a hat for the Interstitial Arts Foundation's online auction
• getting my hats professionally photographed so I can replace the pictures on the website with more impressive ones (thanks, Luke)

Next up: finishing some more hats and selling them.

(Edited on request to add linkage.)

Comments

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Wow, a stunning hat and a stunning photo. Congrats to both of you!

Link to your "minimal but elegant website" please?

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Links added. Thanks!

And I suppose the real next step is getting those new pictures up on the website, but that will require some thought and time.

[janetl.livejournal.com]

Careful about that Millinery Artisan Guild -- they're a tough crowd!

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

The ones you really want to watch out for are the million millennial military millinery artisans. They're tough, they're numerous, and their hats last forever.

[e-bourne.livejournal.com]

I remember the beautiful roses you made while visiting with me. A cocktail hat strikes me as the perfect important gift. Beautiful enough to be worn with pride. Frivolous enough to be lots of fun.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Those roses are now in a bag, waiting to be used on another hat. I thought they were going to go on the niece's hat, but her dress is white, not ivory, so the ivory roses would not do.

That was an oddly pleasant afternoon, despite the appalling circumstances.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Excellent photo, beautiful hat. I am very proud to own a Kate Schaefer cocktail hat.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm pleased with the picture you took of that hat, which will also be on the website once I spend time on it.

[samhenderson.livejournal.com]

I love that roses hat. Lovely stuff!

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Sam.

(And now I'm thinking: lettuce hat. Lettuce hat. Hmmm.... nah. Texture's wrong. Still, lettuce hat...)

[neile.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, Kate!

They are so gorgeous!

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Neile.

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

Ooh, lovely!

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Susan. I've been reading your accounts of rain in the land of sunhats with interest and amazement at the different climates human bodies like.

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

Wow, stunning photo, awesome hat concept. :)

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Charlie. I like the phrase, "awesome hat concept." Now I have to think about what the difference is, if any, between a hat concept and a hat conceit.

[stephanieburgis.livejournal.com]

I LOVE Blood Red Roses Hat #1! So beautiful and elegant and unique. If you ever sell hats at Wiscon I will be hovering over the table avariciously... ;)

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Steph. I doubt that I'll sell in the dealers' room (at this point, my allergies make that problematic), but I intend to have some hats in the art show again this year, and I'll certainly wear one to your launch party.

[criada.livejournal.com]

I love your hats. I was seriously just thinking about them last night. I've started my own attempt at selling wire and bead tiaras. It's a lot of fun so far.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Where are you selling? Since I'm working on the headpieces for my niece, I think I should try for the wedding market, but I haven't explored the options yet. The biggest problem for any of this work is how labor-intensive it is to create such a tiny thing, so pricing is difficult. As you know.

[criada.livejournal.com]

I'm on Etsy.
As you can see, I've only got a few things up. (I seriously just started a few weeks ago. I still have to photograph and write copy for a bunch of my stock. I'm also in an anxious state of "is this good enough to sell?!?" and hoping I make a little money so I can buy actual silver wire.
I should also probably focus on the wedding market and make generic white stuff, but I really want to make crazy, quirky pieces. I figure I can compromise.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I'm charmed by the Black Button Tiara.

[criada.livejournal.com]

And as for pricing, I asked a few friends what they'd pay for my work. I'd pay at least a hundred dollars for the Blood Rose hat, possibly more.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pricing is hard. My hats start at $125, and I don't cover my labor properly at that price point. I made and sold "Blood Red Roses #2/Our boots and clothes are all in pawn" at $150, which was close to a reasonable price if I worked a little bit faster. I've made a hair ornament that I call "Where's the hat?" since it's mostly feathers, and I should be able to produce similar things for under $100. I'm uncertain whether I want to do so.

Most of the hatmakers in the Millinery Artisan Guild aim for a higher end market, in part because handmade hats are at least as much art objects as they are clothing and in part because none of us can compete for the mass production market. I can't compete with someone who gets paid $2/hour, and I definitely can't compete with someone who gets paid 8 cents per hour (the pay rate in Bangladesh may have gone up since the last time I saw stats).

What I can do is make hats that aren't like anything else out there, because they come out of my particular head, my worldview, my intersection of hand and eye. I've made two variations on Blood Red Roses; I'll probably make two more, since there are some things that interest me about the red charmeuse flowers. At that point, I'll stop with the red guys, because I don't want to repeat what I'm doing, though I'll go on making variations in other colors for a while.

[criada.livejournal.com]

My philosophy's, "Everyone should wear silly stuff on their head!" So I'm willing to price my stuff on the lower end, which probably isn't good for me, but I don't need much. I figure I'll make a bunch of little, inexpensive, inconspicuous tiaras as well as a few big awesome garish ones. And making unique work's the real fun part, isn't it? who wants to make stuff that's like everything else out there? I actually worry that I won't be able to make consistent work, since whenever I start on something, it turns into its own thing.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, silly stuff on the head. One of the things I like most about the Millinery Artisan Guild is our slogan, a quotation from the British writer Katharine Whitehorn: "Hats divide generally into three categories: offensive hats, defensive hats, and shrapnel."

[selkie-b.livejournal.com]

I can't wait! I LOVE hats!

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Maybe you'll get to Wiscon this year? It's not far from Minneapolis, and there are probably people you could ride with...