When it comes to hats in Colorado, beanies, baseball caps and the wide-brim mountain hats (aka flat fedora) tend to dominate. But to see someone wearing a true, handcrafted, fashionable hat is rare.
One woman on a mission to get people to wear more hats is Victoria Regina, a milliner who grew up making hats — and she doesn’t mean a pre-made hat with decorations, though she says the hat bars popping up are a good gateway drug. “They’ve gotten people more interested in hats,” she says, adding that she finds people are a little afraid of donning a headpiece because they don’t know how to wear them.
“They’re worried it will make them stand out. But hats are a positive thing,” she says. “It doesn’t matter your age or size, you will get a compliment if you wear a hat.”
One way to get over that fear is by visiting Regina's website and making an appointment with her to show you the possibilities. Regina will also be showing off her work at the sold-out Bella Joy fashion show on August 2.
For the Denver-raised hat designer, making hats started not from the joy of creating, but out of necessity. In her teens, a tragic household accident involving a candle set her hair on fire and burned her face and scalp. While she healed and hoped her hair would grow back, she started making hats to cover her wounds and scars. Her eyebrows and lashes never returned, but her hair partially regrew. Still, her love of hats remained.
Regina says when she started making hats, millinery was a dying art — literally: “The women who had the knowledge were dying out, and they didn’t want to share their secrets.”
While in college working toward a degree in astrophysics and later architecture, Victoria says she was “in the hat closet,” studying hat making on the side with whatever old textbooks she could find. Whenever she traveled, she would look up local milliners in the hopes of meeting up and learning the history and skills of hat-making.
Hats were a mainstay of fashion in the early and mid-20th century, and both men and women considered them an essential part of their wardrobes. Boaters and trilbies were popular in the early 1900s. Flappers’ cloche hats dominated the 1920s. Women’s fedoras came into fashion in the 1930s, then the more elaborate sculptured hats of the 1940s. Pancake hats came into fashion in the 1950s, worn over short hairstyles. In the 1960s, designer Halston’s pillbox hats became famous after First Lady Jackie Kennedy wore them. Hats’ last hurrah came in the 1970s with floppy, wide brims before falling out of fashion.
Regina says her customers are often ladies who attend Kentucky Derby parties and either want something to wear to the event or come for a repair after they partied a little too hard and the hat got damaged. “I do a lot of stiletto fixes,” she laughs. “The hat gets dropped on the floor and stepped on with stiletto heels.”
She says people used to ask for a lot of clip-on fascinator hats, but lately more people want something a little larger, such as a saucer or slice hat, which is a flat, circular or oval shape resembling a small plate. They also request a percher hat, which sits angled on the head, often tilted toward the forehead.
Recently, younger generations have been requesting the Chapeau du Matin, as seen in the film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (a wide-brimmed, lampshade-style hat), or they want a modernized version of a pillbox or circlet hat.
Regina said other classic-style hats that look good on everyone include fedoras, Bretons and boater hats. She says she often makes fedoras for men, but women usually buy them. As an alternative, she loves to see men in a trilby, which has a slightly shorter brim than a fedora and is angled down in the front. (Think Frank Sinatra and the Blues Brothers.)
Though she has 289 hat blocks from vintage paper mâché to custom-made wood, Regina’s favorite way of making hats is freeform, drawing them out in sketches and then seeing where it goes.
“I usually want to do something elaborate, but I want it to be wearable,” she says. “So, I’ll do a couple of big ones to get it out of my system, then tone it down.”
The upcoming Bella Joy Fashion show event is a celebration and remembrance of one of Denver fashion's own, Isabella Joy Thallas, an aspiring fashion creative who was tragically killed in a senseless act of violence in 2020. Following her death, her family started a foundation to keep her memory alive and raise money to put toward arts and mental health programs.
For her part, Regina says attendees who managed to get a ticket to the sold-out show can expect a “modern Marie Antoinette” styling of the Bergere, a wide-brimmed, shallow-crowned hat with lots of adornment and feathers.
Unlike the milliners of the past who kept their skills a trade secret, Regina shares hers in classes at the Art Students League, including one coming up in November.
While Coloradans will likely continue to wear their beanies and mountain-style hats, Regina hopes people will explore other styles and stresses that felt hats really should be worn in the fall and winter and straw and natural fibers should be worn in the warmer months of spring and summer. “Hats are seasonal,” she explains. “But if you like your hat, go ahead and wear it. I just think you should buy more!”
Miss Victoria Regina will show off her hats at the 3rd Annual Bella Joy Fashion Show at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, August 2, at Mile High Station, 2027 West Colfax Avenue. The show is sold out, but donations can be made to benefit the Isabella Joy Foundation anytime.
