Your Wardrobe Unlock'd

Lynn McMasters shows you how to make three different styles of 1912 straw hats, just in time to go down with the ship in fabulous style!

The bonnet is the iconic accessory of the early nineteenth century: Serena shares how to construct a Close Bonnet of c.1810.

The calash bonnet is one of the most intriguing 18th century accessories. Serena makes a historically accurate example.

In Part 2, Lynn shows how to make several more hairstyles, add the finishing touches, and make the wigs removable.

Lynn shows how to display your hats like a museum would, by making paper wigs for headforms.

Lynn finds out whether several tools and machines are worth the money, or whether they just make a simple job more complicated. 

The Winterthur Collection  has many fantastic historical clothing and accessory catalogs. Here's the best  from 1850-1919

There are many Tudor dresses of 1530 and later on the re-enactors' circuit, but few earlier ones. Let's go back to 1510 and do something different!

In this final part of the series, we will complete the skirt to the gown and the hood and see Mistress Etty in her completed gown at Kentwell.

During the Natural Form Era (1876-1882), straw was a popular material for hats and bonnets in both summer and winter.

I'll show you an easy technique to create three different Natural Form hat shapes by altering and decorating modern straw sun hats and using some items found around the house.

Overcoming the structural challenges of this project was a breeze for our master milliner Lynn McMasters, but choosing how to finish off the covering to match Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter in the new Alice in Wonderland movie was much more difficult.

Here she shares the details on covering and finishing this fantasy topper, including how she printed her own fabric and made her own supersized hatpins. The result demonstrates how to bend and shape basic, accurate period costume ideas into enviable theatrical, fantasy, gothic or steampunk works of art!

When is a flat pattern not a flat pattern? When is a Hatter sane?

The answer to the second question is rarely: we’re all mad.

The answer to the first is: when you can use a flat pattern to create a hat that looks like it couldn’t have been made with a flat pattern but really was by joining flat shapes together to construct a three dimensional shape.

With a new Hatter due to hit cinema screens soon, we thought we'd ask Lynn how to create his signature topper!

The widespread use of French Hoods amongst the middle and upper classes of 16th century England is a surprisingly static phenomenon.

Even as clothing styles changed with relative fluidity throughout the century, the constant favor that the French Hood had found allows us to examine its progression of style in a much more comprehensive manner.

I offer my theories in addition to positing new ideas as to how French Hoods were likely constructed between the years of 1530 and 1560, as well as how they evolved after their heyday had passed.

Feathers have been used on hats for centuries not just for their intrinsic beauty, but when you add feathers to a hat they retain a flow and bounce that makes them look almost alive.

In this article I'm going to cover several things that you can do to turn feathers into hat ornaments: burning, dyeing, stripping, shaping and clipping. These can result in some really eye-popping effects, from multi-coloured plumes to reconstructing the whole wings that Edwardian women so loved!

My passion for Ostrich plumes started when I saw the opening credits of the 1997 movie Wings of the Dove.

Where do such plumes come from?

How do milliners fabricate them and can I create such confections?

These are all questions I asked myself then, and they led me on a course of study and experimentation. In this article I will share some of what I have learned along the way.

or My hat looks like it has a dead fish on top because the bow just lies there! How can I fix that?

One of the most often used decorative elements on late Victorian and Edwardian hats were bows and ribbon loops.

To a non-milliner, trying to recreate some of these fantastic hats may seem a daunting task. Here are some tricks that simplify things.

This month Lynn shows us how to add large areas of silk flowers or ribbon decorations to a hat, without using glue and without sewing each one on individually.

Why would you want to add decorations to a hat in this way?

There are several reasons, but the most important would be to save the base hat from being damaged, either because it is vintage or because you might want to redress it in the future and anything you do now will have to be undone.

Have you ever walked into a large craft or fabric store to purchase the things you need to decorate that fantastic hat you're making, and been totally overwhelmed by the possibilities?

Should your hat be simple and elegant, or should it be a liberally decorated, multi-coloured feast of delights?

Professional period milliner Lynn McMasters shares her secrets with us in this new series on millinery design.

When I set out to learn more about European women’s turbans, I assumed this would be a fairly narrow subject. I had a few preconceptions shared by many costumers: namely, that turbans were limited to Regency period evening wear; that they looked much like the classic African, Middle Eastern and Asian wrapped headdresses on which the European fashion turban was based; and that a turban was always a turban. The reality turned out to be more complex.

In this article I'll discuss the evidence, show you lots of examples from various periods and then discuss in detail many ways to reproduce authentic looking turban headdresses - as well as how to recreate the beautiful ornamental pins that were used to secure and decorate them.