Nestled in a quiet corner of College street is the Magical store called Lilliput Hats. Seventeen years ago, Lilliput's hat designer and owner, Karyn Gingras, accidentally stumbled upon the art of millinery. When she went to sign up for tap dance lesson, the class was full. This was where fate stepped in and Karyn found herself in a Millinery class. This was the beginning of something great.
The Name:
Lilliput Hats has many magical qualities and one of theses is its name. When Karyn Gingras went to create her business little did she realise was that she needed her name right away.Reading Gulliver's travels she though: " ...of course there is the part of the story about the two different islands one where Gulliver is the giant and the Lilliputians were small, so it just kind of fit." The name took flight and has stuck ever since then.
Clientele :
Over the many years of being in business, Karyn Gingras has seen her share of customers. As theses years change so do the people coming to buy hats! In the very beginning of Lilliput hats the typical customer was a a religious person , mainly Jewish. This was because they need new hats a least 2 times a year for religious occasions. Now, the client may be in her 25 to 35s who goes to all the restaurant openings, the it parties and wear all the in clothing. Her business changes with the people!
Construction:
A lot of time goes into each one of the delicately handmade hats. There is commercial and custom design. Custom work is "what kind of keeps me going everyday, its meeting new people and helping them kind of figure out what they want and putting those things together in a collaborative way." The people at Lilliput will talk to the customer, find out personal style, about lifestyle, also try to find them a hat that would be something they could wear with several different outfits. When they have picked the style, colour and material they want. She makes up a speck for them. This means that they make the hat but the customer does not have to buy it if it wasn't what they had in mind. From here you choose a mould Then you "stretch the material with steam and brims and lots of elbow grease." After this you pin the hat in place, which is blocking and can take anywhere from 20 minutes to and hour and a half. The hat then has to dry , after this it passes through several different hands to be sewn and embellished. On average from start to finish it takes any where from 2 to 5-6 hours. The process of making the hats is long and detailed but this is what makes them standout from department store hats, there is a little bit of love attached to each one.
Biggest Challenges:
Being the extremely talented designer that she is , Karyn Gingras, likes to have a challenge every once in a while. One of her favourite and proudest challenges was making a hat entirely out of chocolate for the company Cadbury. She let her creative ideas flow and to portray the country of Australia, she made a hat shaped like the Sidney Opera House... entirely made from chocolate. The hat even had tiling made from the different Cadbury wrappers. Karyn Gingras describes the look ; "she was probably combined with her own height, about 8 feet tall—and just before she went out we sprayed it with pam which made everything really glisten and it was just like it was quite amazing."
This amazing look was put into a spectacular show of several well known designer who also created edible art.
Signature Style:
Whats the designer and owner of a hat store without a hat? On a regular basis Karyn Gingras wears something like a little cap that you can just thrown on with an outfit and go. For going out in the evening, she may wear a style she calls "Paris"
( influenced by the designer Gabrielle) which is a black hat that swirls into a flower shape with material, perching about 6 inches off of her head. When Karyn Gingras describes her own style she says, "I tend to like very minimalist, very sculptural pieces. No embellishments, its more about the shape. " There you go simple and elegant is in.
