My latest project

So for the last few weeks I have had the privilege of digging through literally mountains of vintage hats.  I have sifted my way through piles of dust-covered junk to find the pieces that were worth keeping, both actual vintage hats and ones made for the stage by past costumers.  I would love to share all of the things I've found here with you but there simply isn't enough time in the day to photograph all of the items nor would it be practical to post all 90 plus pictures I took today on this blog post.  Therefor I will link to my photostream on Flickr where all of the pictures are and I will share only the best ones (and/or most entertaining ones) here. 

Here is my Flickr link.

Lets start with the storage space itself.  Currently the storage space is located in a large room in the upper-story of the theatre building at Washington State University.  The project I am working on currently is organizing, sorting and moving all of the costume pieces to another building.  Here is the current space:

This is the view from the door end of the space.  We also store large furniture here.  There are several other smaller rooms as well containing shoes, hats and dance wear. 

Here is one of my piles of junk: 

 Note large amounts of plastic greenery.

I have looked at literally hundreds of hats in the last couple of weeks but here are a few of my favorites:

peekaboo little bird!

 Norwegian Blue Fox tail hat.

 Dior turban hat.

 Italian paillette sequined hat.

 A little torn netting but otherwise beautiful condition.

Schiaparelli hat.  I think it probably had more decorations originally because there are some loose threads.

Beautiful ostrich feather curls.

Tarantula hat!   I have no idea what this hat was originally supposed to look like but the fur tendrils are wired and so they can be shaped into many different forms.  It just looks like a big spider to me.  

Ok, just a couple more I promise : )

 This was a men's straw hat that has since been decorated to be a lovely ladies hat.

 

This is easily the most gorgeous straw hat I have ever seen. I want one.  Anyone know where I can get a hat blank like this?


Ok,  that's it for tonight because frankly I'm not sure I could fit any more pictures into a single post.  Sorry about that.  

Tomorrow I will post again with a couple of the true gems of the collection! (And one more really silly one)