CANADIAN DESIGNERS USED THE GARDEN FOR THAT HAT INSPIRATION

The Art Gallery in Victoria, Canada staged a fashion show of botanical headwear. Designers created botanical hats - romantic and classical, avant-garde and overgrown – for a runway show.

Susan Ramsey designed her hat around vases. "I decided to look at all the gowns as vases, and create floral arrangements and designs that work by repeating a color, pattern or line.”

Another hat trick involved woven and braided coconut fibers that have been bleached, pressed, glued and cut into strips. Garnished with a long tail of quail feathers, it was paired with an outfit Ramsey calls the Road Warrior, because of its black, almost sinister look and completely bare back.

Ramsey created a crunchy chapeau with large dried leaves of a magnolia grandiflora, held in place by hot glue and embellished with shiny pewter and paper-wrapped wire that is looped, coiled and spiked into a windblown cyclone.

Some of the hats were built on existing hats picked up second hand, while others were formed on wide bands and shapes that Ramsey and her assistant, Rekha, invented. "We created little cloche hats from felt and chicken wire, so they can be molded to fit anybody's head, but we soon found out we were not milliners. Coming up with inspiration is a snap. It's the mechanics that have been a bit tricky."

The fundraiser was planned by Lauren Garvey.

Floral designer Rekha works on a creation at Ramsey and Ramsey Flower Merchants.	Lauren Garvey as a green-topped Medusa in a headpiece made of horsetail.
Hat made of dried magnolia grandiflora leaves by Victoria flower designer and TC columnist Susan Ramsey.

Photographer: John McKay, Times Colonist

From Canada.com