*~Whimsical Versatile Ladies’ Top Hat design by WiLd PeArLy~*
So, around two weeks ago a really nice lady from Bangkok had contacted me about my designs. She said how much she likes my ‘artistic vision’ and she wondered if I could make her a special hat. Of course I responded “of course”! I totally enjoy making hats and in general I wish we could bring back the beautiful culture of hat fashion (especially from the Victorian/Edwardian era).
I do make hats from time to time, but have to admit not as often as I would love to, so this inquiry was a huge refreshment! The Lady said she just wants it to be mostly black and purple with some pink tones as well….and everything else was left up to my imagination (“my kind of a Customer”) Yay! I am actually totally used to accepting only these kinds of custom orders, since I don’t see what the purpose of an Artist is if you dictate to them ‘what and how to put together’?
Anyway, despite the fact that realistically I don’t even know ‘what the lady looks or sounds like (and still don’t, haha), I felt an instant connection between the two of us…not even too many words were involved, just that magical, mystical, invisible thread of a nice exchange that somehow put us together in time and space and connected us across the seas. I love that kind of a feeling. It is essential, like the process of creating itself. It’s almost like you search for that ‘light in the dark’…and on the way of finding it, you start discovering many other things, emotions by using, opening up your different senses. And the intuition has a main lead. My motto is to let it flow and the idea will get back to you, then strike you like a bolt of lightning!
And once you get the electricity to start flowing through your system, you know the engine has started running and you will get somewhere. The road is open, the possibilities are infinite. And it is all about the story telling. What you are going to experience, soak in and present on your way during the journey. The stories might be the same or very similar, but if you are completely open to let your Imagination and Intuition fly freely, like opening a cage and letting them birds fly to their freedom, their ‘baby bird’ named Idea will get back to you super fast and you will be creating which is the ultimate power of joy!
And I do love to let my ‘baby birds’ fly freely. It happens every single time while I’m creating. There are no obstructions, no reservations, and I do feel blessed. And when my Imagination and Intuition started flying during and after the electronic conversation with my Bangkok Customer, the Idea got back to me, whispering to my ear a story of a beautiful garden of many flowers’.
The Garden became a metaphor of different cultures from different continents and trade roads. Those mystical, amazing ways of communicating, sharing and intertwining. I was thinking about the beauty and romantic power of exchange between ‘total strangers’ and people so distant coming from two different cultures has. I got an image of a whimsical garden full of beautiful flowers that have human faces. They all have different skin tones, appearances, but the petals are all the same or similar. In a symbolical way the petals represent the human race…like, we are all coming from the same place and have a “soul” and “flesh”, but the faces and ‘skins’ are diverse. I know the Bangkok Lady told me “to go over the top with the design as much as I want”; and making a lot of these flower faces and incorporating them in the centerpiece (embellishment) of the hat would look pretty, but on the other hand, it crossed my mind “what if there would be only one face that can tell the same story?”. That’s how I made my decision to make “one special face” of many colors out of polymer clay.
It looks like a wild child.
There are many colors forming the skin pattern, like a ‘barilef’ of different continents. The ‘wild child’ got a ‘body’ in the form of a keyhole which sends the message ‘take a look inside of yourself’…or explore the garden of beauty.
Basically, the main idea I got was to create a versatile piece that will always put a smile on my Bangkok Lady’s face and whoever finds themselves in her company. It is a conversational piece for an outgoing person who has an Explorer’s heart, who loves to learn new things and is not afraid to express her ‘true colors’. This idea is completely shown through the multilayer and patterns I built in this hat. It is a hat ‘chameleon’ we can state.
Depending on your mood, you can wear just the hat with its own, “basic” embellishments (also, there is no “front” or a “back”, because you can turn it the way you like the best at the moment) and then combine it (or not) with 3 different applications.
One is the stretchy purple band that basically serves as a supporter for attaching two main embellishments/centerpieces…and you can choose “the level/height or width” where you are going to place the band before you clip on the centerpieces.
The most fun part is that the centerpieces can be clipped or pinned on wherever you want! I personally love it this way and am always trying to make my designs more playful and fun…
One of the embellishments (the smaller, bow looking one with some sort of a ‘pearl/rhinestone/wheel of fortune/Mandala) has a metal hand-stamped dangling charm. The quote stamped on was said by a great (Victorian/Edwardian era) writer George Bernard Shaw: “Life is about creating yourself”.
I thought this sentence makes perfect sense to this whole design. It completes the story of “The Lady of the many Flowers”. Originally I didn’t have the idea to put any quotations on this hat (and I am an Artist who mostly try to express certain things and say them in different ways rather than printing “the bold” letters). But, once again, my ‘little helper’ Intuition released the Idea while I was reading some of Shaw’s writings while working on the hat. Oh, these infinite combinations and possibilities are so freakin’ romantic! Haha
It’s all about romanticism and storytelling. And Bangkok-Illinois (via Balkan) art thread makes a perfect, little link in this creative, Intercontinental connection of fellow Dreamers.
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