Why I Love Designing with Sinamay

Lightweight Elegance with a Touch of Romance

Some hat-making materials are wonderfully dependable. Others seem to invite the imagination to wander. For me, sinamay is one of those materials.

Over the years, I’ve worked with wool, organza, buckram, beautiful designer straws, horsehair fabrics and many other traditional millinery materials. I appreciate each of them for different reasons, but sinamay has become one of my favorites. It is wonderfully light, surprisingly strong, and—perhaps most irresistible to a milliner—it can be coaxed and shaped into some truly romantic silhouettes.

A Modern Material for an Old-Fashioned Romance

I have always been drawn to the magnificent hats of the Edwardian era. They were unabashedly feminine—wide brims, beautiful flowers, sweeping feathers and enough drama to make a woman’s entrance before she had spoken a word.

Creating that same sense of romance for a woman today presents an interesting challenge.

The Edwardians relied upon wire, stiffening methods and carefully positioned hatpins to support their enormous hats and secure them to the elaborate hairstyles of the period. Fortunately, a modern milliner has materials those earlier hatmakers never had.

Sinamay is one of them.

Its strength lets you create a generously proportioned brim without a heavy-looking hat. Its open weave gives it an airy quality, and when light passes through it, the material can take on an almost delicate appearance. Yet that delicacy is deceptive: properly handled, sinamay can provide the structure needed for sculptural shapes and elaborate trims.

Meet Contessa di Rosa

My Contessa di Rosa is a lovely example of what first captured my imagination about sinamay.

I wanted her to have the sweeping presence of an Edwardian-inspired picture hat—the kind of hat that seems made for a garden party, an elegant afternoon tea, or simply an occasion when a woman wants to feel especially beautiful.

Her broad dusty-rose brim creates the drama, while the translucency of the sinamay keeps that expanse from appearing ponderous. Lace, roses and soft feathers add texture and romance, yet the hat still retains its graceful silhouette. The material becomes part of the design rather than merely the foundation.

That is one of the things I enjoy most about working with sinamay: it can be both structure and ornament.

So, What Exactly Is Sinamay?

Here I have to allow my research-loving side a few moments. After all, I wanted to know what this beautiful material actually was, too!

Sinamay is made from fibers of the abaca plant (Musa textilis), a plant native to the Philippines. The plant's leaf sheaths yield strong fibers that have long been valued for their durability. In millinery, those fibers can be woven into the wonderfully lightweight material we know as sinamay.

These natural fibers give a milliner a real playground.

Sinamay can be blocked, curved, layered, and sculpted. Its stiffness helps a brim retain its shape, while its open weave lets air and light pass through. Layers can deepen the color and provide additional body; a single translucent layer can create an entirely different effect. It can be dyed in beautiful colors and paired with flowers, lace, ribbon, feathers, and other traditional millinery embellishments.

Those are technical characteristics, certainly—but on the worktable they translate into something much more interesting: possibility.

For me, millinery has never really felt like work. There is too much beauty involved. Even in the middle of winter, when the world beyond my window may be gray, windy and cold, my workroom can be filled with flowers, lace, velvet, feathers and ribbons in every imaginable color. Then there is sinamay waiting to be shaped into something new. Surrounded by all those beautiful possibilities, designing a hat is simply a joy.

Where History Meets the Modern Hat

Perhaps that is why sinamay feels so at home in my own designs.

I love historical millinery, but I am not trying to make a woman of today dress as though she has stepped out of 1905. I would rather borrow the romance—the extravagant brim, the flowers, the feathers, the femininity—and reinterpret it into a hat she can enjoy wearing now.

Sinamay gives me considerable freedom to do that.

It can provide the grand silhouette I admire in antique hats while offering the lightness and versatility I want in a contemporary design. Old-fashioned romance and modern millinery don't have to compete. In the right hat, they can be rather lovely companions.

And perhaps Contessa di Rosa, with her sweeping pink brim and unabashedly romantic personality, says that better than a list of sinamay's characteristics ever could.