Amina Hood, local milliner, summarizes her introduction to hat making as a “happy accident.” She is no stranger to fashion and has experience working in luxury retail, for stores like Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. But things changed in July 2013, when a friend asked her to make a hat for her trip to the Burning Man festival. She fell in love with the process and continued to make hats for friends with no intention of it becoming a business.
Then, a few years later in 2015, she entered a contest hosted by Lock & Co., one of the oldest hat stores and makers in London established in 1676. When she was named a finalist, one of nine from around the world, she saw her talents anew.
“That’s when I went to London for this whole thing, and then that’s when I realized, ‘Ok, maybe I’m good at this, maybe I should do this,’” she recalls. “Kind of looking back on it, it was a total fluke. [laughs] Everything just aligned.”
Hood makes bespoke hats for clients to wear to events like the Royal Ascot horse race in England and also has a production line with hats ready to wear to the beach or a baseball game. People have expressed their desire for hats to come back in style in conversation with Hood. While she’s uncertain of whether they’ll resurface in the same way, she encourages people to try wearing them.
“I think a lot of people, when they think of hats, they think of what used to be or they think of vintage,” she says. “I try to make hats that are fun, accessible and sophisticated. Also, I think that life is kind of serious, so it’s good to have a little fun. It’s a fun way to accessorize.”
She finds inspiration for her designs in art, fashion, sculpture and everyday life.
“I’m kind of the person that just grabs inspiration from every day, walking down the street, everything I see,” Hood says. “I’ll see a color on somebody’s shirt, and I’ll be like well that’s great. I just log it in my brain. Then when it’s time to create, it just comes together.”
This process of collecting inspiration is seen in the hat she created for London Hat Week in April 2020. The theme for the exhibit is futuristic, and her process began with thinking about what she was connected to. She felt inspired by moss, seen in her social media feed, and art, specifically the Fly’s Eye Dome at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
“I remember seeing all these moss walls that people are doing, like Fat Plant Society,” she says. “I follow them on Instagram, and I’ve been obsessed with this moss. Then it just came to me — what if I made this helmet that has moss on it, and it absorbs CO2 in the future and creates oxygen. That’s how my brain works.”
Although she had not anticipated making hats, her love for design persists and she ultimately enjoys the opportunity to connect with her clients.
“I like connecting with people,” Hood says. “I love it when people see themselves in a different way, in a way they haven’t seen themselves before.”