NECCESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION: WOMAN SELLS HATS FROM HER HOME

On top of fashion
Fort Myers woman sells formal hats from small shop in her home

By Dick Hogan
April 16, 2006
News-press.com - http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006604160311

Photos by Andrew West/news-press.com Johnnie Farmer, owner of Fashion Hats by J, sells hats for women out of her home on Apache Street in Fort Myers.

Johnnie Farmer was working as a health aide at Cape Coral High School in 1985, wondering how she could make some extra money during summer vacation.

"It seemed like a voice in my head was saying, 'Hey, you've got training in floral design, you can use that for hats,' " she said.

More than 20 years later, Farmer, 77, is still working as a milliner from a small shop in her Fort Myers home. Her hats are artfully arranged on two racks, along with a selection of women's suits.

The business is fairly seasonal, Farmer said, with Easter and Mother's Day the best times.

Easter sales are strong because many women want a new hat for church, she said.

Formal women's hats accounted for $978.6 million in sales in 2005, according to the Headwear Information Bureau, a trade group.

But most retail outlets are small operations like Farmer's, said Aaron Kesmetis, who runs thehatsite.com along with a hat store of his own in North Conway, N.H.

Wearing a hat is something of an art in itself, Farmer said, and sometimes she has to coach a customer who doesn't quite know how to get the right effect.

Ideally, she said, a hat should be worn tilted (Farmer always tilts hers to the right) and positioned properly on the head — not pushed way back or down over the eyebrows, for example.

"I've started some ladies wearing hats because they don't feel comfortable, they don't know what to do," she said. "I try not to sell a person anything that doesn't look good on them."

One of Farmer's most loyal customers is Dethine Mazyck, a retired Sprint training supervisor.

"We started out as children wearing hats and we vowed once we became adults we wouldn't wear hats, but it followed us all the way," she said. "My mother always said if you didn't have a hat you weren't properly dressed for church."

As for her taste in hats, Mazyck said, "You want something that's for you. I can't wear a small hat. A small hat doesn't do anything or me. I have to have that brim. You have to have something that works for you. You can put it there, but it's not becoming."

The women's hat industry took a hit in the 1960s, said Casey Bush, director of the Headwear Information Bureau.

"That was because of the beehive hairdo," she said. "It's pretty hard to wear a hat with a beehive."

Since then there's been a gradual recovery, Bush said, with sales increasing from 5 to 10 percent a year since the 1980s.

Now, she said, trends are driven largely by celebrities' choice of hat wear: Eva Longoria, Missy Elliott and Steve Harvey are among the performers who wear a hat with style.

Kesmetis said he's noticed that for formal men's hats, "the rules of hat etiquette have been thrown out the window. We're selling them to teenagers with their baggy pants, men changing jobs and wanting to look good, and the traditional older guy who's worn a hat all his life."

The cool look these days, he said, is a fedora with the "stingy-brim" look, meaning the brim is narrow.

One thing Farmer and Mazyck agree on is that there's nothing worse than coming face to face with another woman wearing the same hat.

That's why Farmer tends to sell only one hat of a particular style and color — they generally cost $40 to $90 — while a department store might have dozens.

"I walked into a store and they had some gorgeous hats but they had too many of the same," Mazyck said. "You just don't want to see yourself."

Anne Walker, left, tries on a holiday hat at Fashion Hats by J with the help of owner Johnnie Farmer. Walker owns at least 60 hats, many of them bought at Farmer's business.