Harlem Hat Queen

As a little girl growing up in Alabama in the 60's, I was fascinated with fashion, especially hats. I was 6 years old and my feet just barely touched the pedal on my grandmothers old Singer sewing machine.

In a small backwoods town in rural Alabama, and no other children to play with, sewing became my refuge and my everything.

I made doll clothes, funny dresses for myself, and crazy hats. I always impressed the judges in the 4-H Club. Those lonely days were replaced with joy when my new fashion creation was finished.

My momma and daddy were so young when they had me. They were struggling financially and were just not ready for a baby. My grandmother caught a greyhound bus in Birmingham, Alabama bound for Dayton, Ohio. She came to rescue me and took me to Parrish, Alabama when I was two months old.

Life as an only child with elderly grandparents in the deep south was not easy. There was a lot of secrecy about my real parents and I was never allowed to discusss it.

In 1962, when I was five years old, my grandmother took me to Dayton to visit her son Andre and daughter in law Maxine. I did not even know that they were my parents. I wasnt sure how we were related. It was a big secret.

Maxine was so beautiful and she had a great sense of style. She was a skilled seamstress that sewed for many women in the community. I spent most of my time watching her cut and sew. I was mesmerized by her sewing room and all of her tools of the trade. I had never seen scissors that cut fabric in a zig-zag pattern before and I was amazed. When it was time to go back down south, Maxine gave me a pair of her pinking shears. They were big and heavy and my little hands could hardly balance them. I did not know that this special gift was from my mother, but I took care of them and they are still with me. I have my 59 year old pinking shear scissors in my millinery studio in Harlem.

Every summer, starting at age 6, I would visit my aunt Eva in New York City. Aunt Eva was into high fashion designer clothing. She wore only the best and was well known in her circle of society as a trendsetter.

She recognized that I had design talent at an early age and she tried to nurture and develop it. During Christmas, and birthdays, instead of toys, I got design and craft kits to make jewelry and leather bags with instructions for assembly.

I became so good at making earrings, that I had my own jewelry business at 10 years old. I sold earrings to my aunt's sorority sisters and her nursing staff at the hospital.

Even though, I did not live with my mother until I was a teenager, It was evident that I had inherited my special designer skill set from her. When my grandmother died, I went to live with my mother, Maxine, who had moved to Florida. She taught adult sewing classes all over the southern Miami area. I guess it was in the genes. I would often go with her in the evenings and help teach adult sewing classes, since I was quite proficient at a young age. I was 13.

Every summer, I left the south and came to New York for three months at a time, starting at age 6 to age 19 when I moved to New York permanently. The day after graduation in 1976, I arrived in NYC for good.

A year later, I enrolled in the best fashion school in the world, The Fashion Institute of Technology in downtown Manhattan. It was an amazing environment with such a rich history of training many famous and successful people in the fashion industry.

I majored in Fashion Buying and Merchandising and I graduated with a degree in Textiles and Apparel Marketing. My studies prepared me for a career in behind the scenes corporate fashion. I was not a design major and I intended to work only on the business side of fashion.

During my college years, I spent a lot of time in my godfathers store. His name was Kermith Morgan and his partner was Carl Davis. Along with my Aunt, Eva Petty, They owned and operated a very upscale, high end, men's clothing store on the upper west side of Manhattan. The store was called LeMan's Haberdashery.

I went there every day after school at F.I.T. to help the customers in any way that I could. I was trained by the best and I learned so much about high end clothing because they sold the most beautiful Italian suits and bespoke menswear.

After graduation, I worked for a large corporation called Brylane which published several mail order catalogs as well as being the parent company of Victoria's Secret. Mail order was popular back then before shopping online was an option. I worked in the mail order division putting together those catalogs.

After a series of jobs as a wholesale sales representative in some showrooms, I took an interesting job as a showroom assistant for an accessory line. It was a beautiful collection of belts and handbags designed by the world famous Israeli artist, Ilana Goor. She is known for her huge statues and monuments in major cities in Israel as well as her gallery and home decor.

During my entire working career, I always made hats for myself as a hobby. My hats got so much attention that I decided to do a pop up at a market in Soho. The hats sold out immediately. In the 80's, I quit my corporate fashion job and became a full time, self taught, milliner. I outgrew my small space in Soho and moved to a storefront in Harlem over 30 years ago.

My hat designs have become well known all over the world, from the pages of Vogue to being on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. From Fashion week, the Kentucky Derby, and Royal Ascot to television and film, making hats bring me joy.

Evetta Petty