A Month in China! Beijing: Fabulous Couture Hats!

ME in that hat!

THE hat of my dreams!

This post is about a very special day in Beijing made possible by an email friendship! Back in the fall, when I was OCD Trip Planning, reading as much online as I could about China, and discovering all sorts of things I wanted Chef Dan and I to be able to do, one of the online magazines I discovered was Time Out Beijing. The article that caught my imagination and fancy was “Where to get bespoke goods made in Beijing: Five of Beijing’s master artisans who are at your service” about Beijing’s top milliner, whose hats have graced the covers of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue: Elisabeth Koch. I then “Googled” and read several other articles about her, including Interview with Elisabeth Koch: China’s Milliner to the Stars in the upscale Jing Daily that covers China’s top luxury market. I clicked onto her website, and wound up pouring for hours over her totally over-the-top, fabulous hats! I fell in love with at least half of them, and although she makes “normal”, classic hats, my faves were her sculptural and “crazy” ones festooned with lobsters and such, as they are truly unique and wearable works of art! (My dad, knowing my taste, would have used his favorite phrase “attention seeking devices” to describe them, and that they are!) I knew, of course, that they were Way Beyond The Likes Of Me… These are hats for Royal Ascot! For the Kentucky Derby! For the cover of Vogue!
But then I saw that she also does affordable Hat-Making & High-Tea Workshops at her studio for up to 12 people… and I decided to email her, on the off-chance that she had a hat-making tea scheduled the week we’d be in Beijing, and that I could join it… When I didn’t hear back from her, I assumed she was way too busy to deal with the likes of a small-fry like me, and let it go… And then, out of the blue came THE nicest email Ever, apologizing for not getting back to me as she’d just a had a baby(!), and thanking me for my appreciation of her hats! That email turned into a friendship, and the long and the short of is that she invited us to come to her studio when we were in Beijing! We arranged to go on our last day in Beijing, for me to try on her fabulous hats… AND for her parents to come for a holiday at the Elkhorn Inn in the spring, as her father is an avid fly-fisherman, and Elkhorn Creek, which runs right behind the Inn, is known as The Best Wild Trout Stream in the USA! Shall we all sing a chorus or two of “It’s A Small World After All”?!

I grew up in the fashion business in NYC, with my mother being a fashion illustrator, and so Elisabeth’s hats are, for me, the things that Fashionista Dreams are made of! I was truly excited to not only get to meet her and visit her studio, but to actually try on her hats! Hats that made it onto the cover of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar! And Self, Cosmopolitan, L’Officiel, Elle, and Tatler, too! This was truly a unique and “only in Beijing” thing to be able to do in China! Elisabeth left the world of banking to create a studio that has become known as THE couture millinery studio in China; she studied at the renowned Wombourne School of Millinery in the U.K. before opening her studio in Beijing in 2007, and she did the hats for the Chinese espionage thriller “The Message.” and Feng Xiaogang’s “If You Are the One 2.” She is a delightful, fun, truly creative, and down-to-earth gal, who, like I, loves vintage clothing and hats! Dan and I had a fun afternoon with her (and her newborn) at her studio, trying on hats and talking! And Elisabeth literally proved to me that truly ANYTHING can become a fabulous hat!

ANYTHING can become a great hat!

And I am now the Very proud owner of several of her signed, one-of-a-kind “photo-shoot” hats and feather headpieces, including the Absolutely Fabulous Red Roses hat she created as an homage to one worn by Audrey Hepburn!