>25 years ago in 1990…

1990-1991 were very creative…for me
Kates Millinery was a dream for young milliner.
A two floors millinery of 50,000 ft/sq downtown Montreal….
with a payroll of 50 workers full time until 1992 when they close…
The manufacture with a stock room of archives from the Sixties. Flowers,ribbons,trimmings,bodies,fabrics,veiling,feathers,braids.
They had more than 1000 woodblocks and 100 Aluminium st0mper dyes….
who where blocked 600 hats per day…
On “wood” a hand blocker had to make at least
7 to 8 dozen a day ….
When i start to learn hand blocking 6 months after i got a Bursting of a dorsal synovial cyst of the wist…..and had to get a surgery.

One day when we were in New York with Irving Kates …he told me …it’s too bad but you should have been born 15 yrs before and you would have been a renowned milliner…and he says to me however you talented and you can get the best block …if they don’t wear hats anymore…its no worth it.
We’ll never get back on their head even if they were bold…they would wear a wig….1990 I was 25 years old…

Between 1988 and 1992 at Kates Millinery as house designer and with my own collection for Kates…I design around 2500 hats and hand made around 400 Hats…
We probably less than 2 pairs of handful real milliner’s who can applies methods of millinery from blocking hats from straw to fur hats and to sewn straw braid….
Hand skilled since 25 years…