March 17, 2023 Black Hat Designers

MILDRED BLOUNT: FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN TO MAKE HATS FOR CELEBRITIES

Mildred Blount was widely recognized as a leading milliner in the 1930s and the 1940s. Blount was most noted for her hat creations for celebrities and people in high society. Her interest in millinery grew while working at Madame Clair’s Dress and Hat Shop in New York City as an errand girl. Her love for millinery led to her opening a dress and hat shop with her sister.

Blount was born in North Carolina, but was orphaned as an infant. She attended Cooper Union in New York City, but did not complete her studies due to falling ill. She was also a recipient of the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship. During World War II, Blount volunteered with the Red Cross and Los Angeles USO for four years.

Over the years, Blount enjoyed researching various styles of hats from past centuries to inspire her modern-day pieces. She designed 87 miniature hats, which represented styles from 1680 to 1937, at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. After this exhibit, her career took off. She was asked to design hats for the films “Gone with the Wind” and “Easter Parade,” making her the first black person to design hats for movie actors.

In the 1940s, Blount opened a hat shop in Beverly Hills, California. She designed hats for singers and actresses, such as Marian Anderson, Mary Pickford, Ginger Rogers and Rosalind Russell, among others. Blount also designed Gloria Vanderbilt’s bridal veil for her first marriage in 1941. In 1942, one of her hats was featured on the cover of “Ladies Home Journal.” She died in 1974 in California.

Mae Reeves

Mae Reeves' Hats Hang At National Museum Of African American History And Culture

African-American women have been wearing fancy hats to church for generations. That tradition is being celebrated at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, which officially opens in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 24. Vintage turbans, caps and fascinators that span a half-century are on display — all from the shop of one woman.

In 1942, a time when few women were becoming entrepreneurs, Reeves opened what would become a Philadelphia institution with a $500 bank loan. Her hat shop, Mae's Millinery, helped dress some of the most famous African-American women in the country, including iconic singers Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horne.

Reeves hung her hat above the store, raising her family in the same building — first in downtown Philadelphia and later West Philadelphia.

"You do what you got to do," she said, reflecting on the early years of running her business in an interview with the Smithsonian recorded after the museum acquired a collection of her hats. "I had to work with my family and make a living too. So I did it, and I'm very proud of it."

Downstairs, customers ranging from white socialites to black domestic workers kept the cash drawer ringing. Reeves' daughter Donna Limerick, a former NPR producer, remembers putting on a black dress and pearls as a teenager to help her mother sell hats made of blue tulle, pink organza and purple feathers.

During Mother's Day and Easter, when women would just come one after the other, that bell would just ring, ring, ring," Limerick says.

Reeves' hat business helps paint an extraordinary portrait of the Great Migration, according to Paul Gardullo, a curator at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

"Think about this: You're talking about amidst of a depression, amidst of Jim Crow, a young woman who has moved from the South to the North, and she made a success of herself really from nothing," Gardullo says.

And many of the women who wore her hats were trying to make more than just a fashion statement.

"For black women who grew up in the Jim Crow era, as my grandmother and my mother did, hats were a way for them to take ownership over their style, a way for them to assert that they mattered," says Tiffany Gill, author of Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women's Activism in the Beauty Industry.

A Philadelphia resident, Gill says she still hears women talking about how they used to save money to buy a hat from Reeves' shop. It was a center not just for black fashion but also for civic life on election days.

"My mom would allow them to bring these big machines into her tiny little hat shop, so people in the community could vote," Limerick recalls.

Every city, Gill says, once had at least one popular, black-owned hat shop where African-American customers could often find better service than at white-owned stores.

"When I see older women who still wear hats to church on Sunday or bring them out on special occasions, it's just a reminder to revere that generation and the ways they asserted dignity when to be black and to be a woman was something that brought about ridicule," Gill says.

They're a generation that Reeves helped dress with pride.

"I like to make them pretty," Reeves explained with a chuckle in her interview with the Smithsonian.

Prompting her mother, Limerick asked, "So many women came to your hat shop and when they left, they sure looked beautiful, didn't they?"

"Oh yeah," Reeves answered.

The hat shop closed in 1997 and a few years later, Reeves moved into a retirement home.

"When she left, her final words were: 'Don't touch anything in this hat shop! I'm coming back to make more hats,' " says Limerick, who later arranged for the shop's contents to be donated to the Smithsonian.

Reeves is turning 104 in October and can no longer practice what for her was more than a craft.

"It was a calling for me, something that I loved to do, making them colorful," she told the Smithsonian. "That's why they came from everywhere to get something different."

The National Museum of African American History and Culture has recreated a portion of Reeves' shop, complete with its original red-neon sign, sewing machine and antique furniture. And she's planning to go see her hats again, this time in the nation's capital.

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Vanilla Beane

Vanilla Powell Beane (born Vanilla Powell; September 13, 1919 – October 23, 2022), known as "DC's Hat Lady", was an American milliner and business woman. One of her hats was displayed and is in the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). In Washington, D.C., there is a Vanilla Beane Day on September 13.

Beane was born in Wilson, North Carolina, on September 13, 1919, to Martha Hagans Powell and James Powell, the sixth of seven children. She worked on local farms, including tobacco and cotton and attended a single room school in Nash County, North Carolina. She graduated from Charles H. Darden High School in 1940, but as part of the class of 1938.

Beane moved to Washington, D.C. in the 1940s to follow her two sisters since there were more jobs available there. She married her husband Willie George Beane in 1942, which she remarked on, at 99 years old, "I married a fellow, Willie Beane, and by my named [sic] being Vanilla, I came up with Vanilla Beane".

While working as an elevator operator at the Washington Millinery and Supply Company, she began making clothing – including hats – since she was around fabric, and was hired in 1955 as a seamstress. While working at the millinery shop she also had a job as mail clerk at the General Services Administration.

In 1975, she was inducted into the hall of fame of the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers, a trade group founded in 1949 in New York City for Black fashion professionals.

In 1979, when the millinery shop she worked at moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland, she bought its remaining supplies and fixtures and opened Bené Millinery & Bridal Supplies. In the Manor Park neighborhood in Ward 4, she served the African American community in that area.[6] She continued working at her store multiple times a week even after her 100th birthday.

Throughout her career she made custom hats for local and national figures, including poet Maya Angelou and civil rights activist Dorothy Height; one of Beane's hats is featured on Height's USPS Forever stamp. One of her hats is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.The NMAAHC also features a detailed 3D scan of a green velveteen wrap hat from the 1950–1960s. The government of Washington, D.C. has designated September 13 Vanilla Beane Day in her honor.

Ms. Vanilla Beane embodied Black excellence. ... She was DC's Hat Lady. She was a mother, a grandmother, and a great grandmother. She was an inspiration for generations of Black women and for anyone who ever thought about turning their talent into a business that you love so much you stay at it into your hundreds.

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HBCU Frat Brothers Launch Fastest-Growing Black-Owned Luxury Hat Brand

Two friends, Archie Clay III and Tajh Crutch, have teamed up to create fashionable fedora hats. Two years ago, they launched Brims and since then, they have been working hard to become one of the fastest-growing Black-owned luxury hat brands in the U.S.

Tajh and Archie first met in college where they were both members of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. After graduating from college in 2012, they have separated ways -- Archie worked in the Human Resources industry with reputable brands such as Marshalls and Target, while Tajh took on the Information Systems field.

A few years later, they met again for a different purpose: to start a fashion line. After being released from his job, Archie started looking for opportunities in entrepreneurship and then he realized the absence of new and innovative brands for fedora hats. He approached Tajh, whom he knew as a fashion lover as well, and convinced him to partner with him to enter the fashion world.

In 2017, after sharing ideas and feedback with each other, Archie and Tajh launched BRIMS. They admitted that they had to go through several trial and errors since they started the business.

"In the beginning, it was all about what sort of brand did we want to be?" Archie said in an interview with the Quintessential Gentleman. "We priced our product too low. We created 3 styles that weren’t the best and as we researched, we had to understand who we were."

Eventually, the duo found the formula that would place their brand in the limelight. They took a more hands-on approach and listened to the feedback from their clients. Now, they are offering several unique designs of fedora hats and they are continuously learning to further improve their brand.

"Trusting your intuition and judgment, go over your product and don't rush the process. Your customers want quality and exclusivity. Be intentional and have the ability to adapt," said Tajh.

For more information about Brims, visit www.wearbrims.com or visit their Instagram @wearbrims

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