EMILY VICKERS
My creations are a nexus of millinery fashion and botanical sculpture. Fastenatures are bands of natural beauty, custom made to be worn for extraordinary occasions. My new line of Sosa Crowns are a combination of faux fur and fine art textiles by Master Weaver, Armando Sosa. I consider millinery to be the crowning glory of fashion. My artistic goal is convincing women to consider themselves under-dressed without a chapeaux on their heads!
After a long career as a freelance producer of large commercial photo shoots, I retired to my studio to recapture the thread of my own creativity I had let go of years ago. My interest in hats dates back to my great Aunt Grace, a professional milliner, who instilled in a 10 year old girl the love of creating beautiful things out of bits and pieces of fabric, leather, fur, and feathers. I turned to Fastenatures when I began to realize that there is nothing man-made that can compare with the dazzling glamour of natural things.
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Please don’t call them HATS….
They’re Fastenators: my riff on the fantastic hairpieces popularized by British Royals.
More precisely, they’re FASTENATURALS : unique works of wearable art, fashioned of organic materials . . . Bark and berries; mosses and mushrooms; feathers and fronds; grasses, reeds, seeds, pods, lichens, leaves, twigs, vines. Mostly gathered on Van Dyke Farm in the Sourlands, although I’m always looking for natural prizes to add flourish, like Japanese fantailed pussy willows, or bumblebees and birds who have conveniently giving up the ghost in plain sight…offering their lovely bodies for art’s sake!
I’ve plucked delicate tree-moss on remote islands in Maine; exotic ball-bromeliads in Texas; and smuggled vines, moss, and leaves from the deep south, all to create this bespoke millinery for extraordinary occasions.
Call them silly or frivolous… but please don’t call them HATS!
EMAIL: elvickers2@gmail.com
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