New Eagle Street Shop Has the Perfect Toppers
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The city has a millinery for the first time in more than 40 years.
Patricia Welch, who has more than 60 years of hatmaking experience, recently opened Tip Top Hats at 16 Eagle St.
Welch said she has always been fascinated by hats and has seen many fashion trends. She's particularly interested in the mod movement.
"It's just something that I have a facility for and have been doing for so long, it's kind of second nature," she said. "It's over 60 years since I’ve been making hats, not all the time, but on and off for a long, long time. So I had a lot of life experience to draw from. I've seen many, many fashions come and go. Being a child of the '60s, I was heavily influenced by the mod movement, fashion movement, and it has stuck with me all these years."
Welch previously owned a shop in Gloucester before moving to New York in the late 1990s. Her work has been featured in juried shows and she's done design consulting.
While she worked in engineering and exhibiting designs, she always made her hats. It all started when she was 13 years old and had to solve a problem.
"I used to go riding on motorcycles with no hat on, no helmet, and your hair would get terribly knotted up," Welch said. "So the first time I made a hat, it was kind of a little bonnet of cotton that just tied under my chin, and it was just to keep my hair from getting tied in knots by the wind."
She came across the "for rent" sign on storefront in May and made a decision she would like to occupy it. She opened on July 1 during First Friday. She said it was a great way for her to get out of retirement.
"Kind of impulsive, but you know I'm not young, and tired of being retired, basically," Welch said. "So this is a wonderful, fun experience, and I think it'll bring more to Eagle Street."
Millinery shops were a mainstay of women's and men's fashion well into the 1960s. At one time, North Adams had three or four independent millinery shops plus departments in some of its stores, like Roberts Co. and the Boston Store.
They began closing down in the 1960s because of owners' retirements or deaths, dislocation because of urban renewal, and changing fashions. The last ones were the Style Shoppe and Hollywood Millinery (then Hollywood Fashions) in the early 1980s.
Welch has hats made from straw, fake fur, wool, leather, and more. Her designs can take hours to complete.
"I start by having an idea in mind for the style that I want to work on, and then I'll pull from my textiles and make a selection that would all work nicely together, so that I can I can make a particular style using various textiles from the same group, so it becomes a collection rather than just a random bunch of hats," she said.
She wants to have something for everyone, and since her one-of-a-kind hats can be pricey, she has commercially hats that are moderately priced.
"Typically in finishing a hat, there's handwork, which is why they become more expensive. Because some hats I spend well, literally hours on," she said.
She gets her fabrics from Mood Fabrics in New York City and while she used to go in person to feel the products before buying, she has since been buying from the store's website.
She hopes to transform her small space into her workshop as well as do some fun ideas. She also hopes to be able to work with kids to teach them how to use their hands and make something for the community.
"I'm hoping to do something that over the years, very often before the holidays, I would sit down and I would just make a few dozen hats, and I would usually bring them to Catholic Charities because it was a place I knew would take them and give them to children in need," Welch said. "I would love to see some kind of program whereby no one in North Adams is without a warm hat in winter."
She said she hopes her shop brings fun and life to the area.
"I'm excited by the fact that Eagle Street seems to really be percolating. Things are really simmering here, and I think that it's only going to become more dynamic as more people open shops," she said.
Tip Top Hats at 16 Eagle St. is open Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. and Fridays from 1 to 7 p.m., with First Fridays having extended hours.
Tags: Eagle Street, hats, caps, millinery,
