In the bag!

Who says the hat craft is dying? Nothing like this! We present you four women designers who make beautiful and unusual models. And there are plenty of reasons to demonstrate them!

Visiting Susanna Gabel
(Berlin)
"Hats are color accents!"
Suzanne offers hats for all women - from young fashionistas to respectable ladies. Among her clients are representatives of high society who need something interesting for a wedding or horse racing. But there are ordinary women among them who just want to make a bright color accent in their appearance. And then they come to Suzanne Gabel’s little atelier, located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin.


The fact that Suzanne became a hatmaker is a matter of chance. “Actually, I wanted to be an assistant to a lawyer. But it didn’t work out of that, and then I enrolled in ladies tailors' courses and then set about making hats.”
Following her lover, she moved from her native Stade to Berlin. First, the couple lived in the bohemian region of Mitte, and then moved to the respectable Charlottenburg, where Suzanne every season pleases her clients from different countries with new options for tablet caps with small veils, wide-brimmed hats made of striped materials or warm “headphones” trimmed with fur .
"And for beginners, we offer our hair hoops," says the designer, showing one such amusing model of interwoven felt stripes.

Visiting Marie Mercier
(Paris)
"I can turn any of my ideas into a hat!"
A little avant-garde, a little flirty, but always very Parisian - these are the creations of Marie Mercier, an artist who always puts individuality above fashion.
The great Chanel herself was the first to notice the talent of little Marie. Coco even suggested that the girl who sent her her sketches, after graduation, start working in her Fashion House. “But my parents were strongly opposed,” recalls Marie Mercier.


Even becoming a journalist and speechwriter, she did not stop drawing sketches and appeared on the streets of Paris in such hats of her own making that passersby looked after her. And in 1987, she gathered her courage and fulfilled her old dream by opening her own studio.
Since then, Marie Mercier has become a cult figure. Her surreal models with ostrich feathers, huge flowers of roses or felt hats in the men's style look great in different ensembles, including with suits a la Chanel.

Visiting Zuss
(Berlin)
"Hats look like a sculpture"
Peaks are next to polka dots, cowboy hats - with cock feathers. Unexpected mixes of styles characteristic of this designer were appreciated even in Hollywood!
A resident of Berlin, Catherine Meissner, aka Zussa, adored sewing and crafting various things as a child.Having become a designer, she is always in search of new forms for her hats, while drawing inspiration from traditional hats, working on the history of costumes from different eras. As a result, there are elegant tattoos and knitted hats pulled over the eyes with appliqués in the form of leaves in the spirit of the 20s, or elegant straw hats with huge brim in the style of the 40s.


Tsussu is eagerly invited by theater and film directors: she came up with hats for the heroes of the movie "Martin Luther", and most recently for the film "Inglourious Basterds" with the participation of Brad Pitt.
But despite Tsussa’s love for decorativeness and retro style, her models are modern and quite adapted for ordinary life. Therefore, probably, many famous actors and artists are happy to wear her hats all the time.

Visiting Misa Harada
(London)
"I do not hold on to tradition"
Eccentric in English: the hats are glamorous, but a little frivolous - this is the style of Misa Harada. One must have a certain courage to bring a new stream to British hat traditions.
But Misa Harada - a Japanese woman living in England - did it. Already the first collection allowed her to immediately enter the major league of English hatter. Naturally, she achieved this success for a reason. Behind him stood hard work and strict discipline.


Misa studied hats at the Royal College of Art in London. Then she worked for the famous Frederick Fox, a supplier of hats to the royal court. Now Misa herself became a star in the design horizon.Among her clients are Janet Jackson, Jennifer Aniston, Christine Davis, The Scissor Sisters.
For this winter, the designer prepared models from Scottish tweed and fur in a relaxed bohemian style - everything is very English, but always with a touch of irony. Pictured above is her model for Yoshi Yamamoto.