Hats and the characters who wear them are sociological reflections of the times we live in; Queen Elizabeth, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter. Milliners have influenced fashion trends around royalty, literature, and church culture. They have taken into account industrialization and politics in their designs.
Lady Linda Crawford is Dayton’s own professional milliner, with 40 years of experience creating and selling her handmade hats, first out of a store in the Salem Mall, and more recently as owner of Secret Beauty Boutique and Hats in downtown Dayton’s Talbott Tower.
“My style is classic and elegant. My motto is ‘Look like a lady, feel like a queen’,” said Crawford, who describes her hats as wearable art. She is recognized as one of the Kentucky Derby’s premier hat designers.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
“Every year hats from my Secret Beauty Collection are paraded by women from around the world on Millionaire Row at the Kentucky Derby,” she said.
Secret Beauty Boutique’s street level storefront sits inside Talbott Tower, next to the League of Women Voters. The building’s art deco interior is a throwback to its 1930s origins. With rounded corners and ribbon windows, it harkens to Dayton’s bustling downtown days.
Crawford grew up in Dayton’s shopping heyday.
“Rike’s, Donenfeld’s, Metropolitan’s. Billy Lewis was right here in this building on First Street. Oh my honey. Just to walk in there gave you this feeling,” she beamed.
“At Rike’s on every floor was a different type of fashion. I worked there as a teenager, custom blending chignons. That was art as well. I would look at a lady’s hair color, and put the basic color and all the highlights in there. Over a hundred beds of nails you’d blend it out and put rubber bands around it, turn it inside out and style it.”
A family matter
For Crawford, hats were a family affair. Inspired by her mother and “Big Mama”, the family matriarch, Crawford says that everybody in the family wore hats.
“As a teenager my Big Mama would have family gatherings and one day she said, ‘why don’t you go back in the garage and pick out a couple hats you like’. I found two little vintage pillbox hats. I loved them.”
She started sneaking into her mother’s hatboxes, and grew passionate about learning how to make them herself, starting with decorating and re-feathering.
In the 1970s, Crawford worked in fashion in New York. She was a merchandiser at Harlem’s Lerner Shops and Waverly Mills Fashion House.
Later on, she decided she wanted to further her skills, and headed to Manhattan’s bustling Fashion District to inquire in a hat store about what tools she would need to go professional. She walked out with rope, chalk, and scissors, but couldn’t quite afford the hat block, a wooden form used to stretch the raw material of a hat.
“I went down to the fur district and there was a store that had hat blocks in the window for five dollars! I went in and purchased them.”
Returning to Dayton, she kept the tools for years, not knowing how to start, and decided to return again to Manhattan to attend New York Hats, a veritable hat school. She promised herself to make a hat every day, and ended up with so many — hundreds — that she had to store them in a net hanging from a bedroom ceiling.
To the races
Crawford’s next adventure was the Kentucky Derby, where a kismet meeting with a Louisville shop owner led to selling her hats at a Crown Show luncheon of 2,500 women.
Now, people looking for Derby hats seek her out, and she sells her wares at hotels in Louisville including the historic Seelbach Hilton.
Shopgirl
Crawford owned a shop at the Salem Mall for many years.
“I didn’t have a lot of money to start, so I decided to have a ‘turn in your hat’ campaign. I had a big barrel at the door, and if you brought an old hat in and threw it in the barrel, you got 20% off on a new hat. I took the feathers off the old hats.”
She took a break for 12 years to focus on the Derby, but grew restless after Covid, deciding to re-open a brick-and-mortar. She traveled to New York’s Fashion District on a buying trip.
“No one was there. The Fashion District is gone. It’s all on the internet now,” said Crawford of the businesses that once filled 7th Avenue, including street vendors who hawked their wares.
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Younger people are not wearing hats as much in church, where Crawford spends every Sunday. As history has demonstrated, they are finding ways to evolve the style, preferring headpieces called fascinators which Crawford creates with curved straw and chique feathers.
“I tell the ladies, when you wear a hat, you just notice — men will open the door for you, get the chair for you. You’re treated different because it literally is a crown.”
A day in the life
Inside Secret Beauty, animal print fabric covers the ceiling and fabulous cropped fur jackets hang in the windows above large window clings of Crawford’s Derby customers donning their headwear.
“I open up at 11. Downtown is not the busiest place, but I have customers who come in and browse. I get new inventory in. We do a lot of changing around (merchandise). We’re here from 11 until 5 a lot of days.”
“I advertise any style, any color, any size. I get people from all over. Something else I do is sculpt straw. That’s what took me over the top.”
She runs back to find an example.
“I take flat straw and manipulate it and then I stiffen it with a hat starch. I try to make no front or back. A hat is like a hairstyle. You should be able to wear it any kind of way that fits your personality.”
Credit: Hannah Kasper
Credit: Hannah Kasper
She says anyone can wear a hat. For someone interested in a custom piece, Crawford requests they come in or send her their head measurements.
“I need to know how tall you are, because I’m not going to make a hat that’s hanging down your back. I like to know your face shape, and most importantly, your head size. Tell me what style (you like) and we’ll go from there with embellishments.”
Her current space works well because it has a water source, so she can work on hats while at the store. She uses water to soften the straw before it goes on the block.
“I set it outside in the sun instead of using driers.
“I use another fabric called buckram. It all has to be wet to start. I (also) dye straw.”
She holds up a navy blue example, and a purple one.
“Making hats, that’s my comfort. I do a lot at home. I found a box of what we call hoods in my storage bin the other day. It’s felt, so I’m going to go home and make some winter hats. This January I will start on my Derby hats.”
Where does she find inspiration?
“The inspiration comes with the feeling that you have of how you want to express your art. What kind of tools, fabrics, embellishments. I might get stuck and I’ll put that hat where I can see it and start on something else. It might be two weeks later, and I finish it within a day.”
Sometimes she wakes up from a dream with an idea. She imagines the accompanying outfit.
“I always tell ladies, buy your hat first. It’s easier to find an outfit to go with the hat, than a hat to be made for the outfit.”
Crawford’s hats start around $59, and goes up to investment piece prices. She has sold hats for $2,800.
Each is one of a kind, like Lady Linda herself.
This article is part of a series called “A Day in the Life” by Writer Hannah Kasper. See more articles like this at daytondailynews.com.
HOW TO GO
What: Secret Beauty Hats Boutique
Where: 131 N. Ludlow St., Dayton
Contact: (937) 271-6577, secretbeautyhats.com
Hours: 11 a.m.- 4 p.m. Wednesday through Friday
Other: Second store in Louisville, Ky. at 101 East Jefferson St.
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