Sitting perched on a bay window bench in her New York City store, milliner Gigi Burris is wearing one of her own creations, a black felted flat-brim hat called the Kyleigh. It's noon on a bright April afternoon, and her Chinatown boutique hasn't opened yet for shoppers. "Should we do a tour?" she asks me, half out of her seat and eager to show off the store she opened earlier this fall.
I'm there with the milliner of the moment to get a behind-the-curtain look at her couture style of hatmaking. We start in the studio tucked in the back, where Burris and her team make all headwear by hand. She walks past straw summer hats and 1920s-inspired cloches to pick up a Swarovski crystal-studded veil fascinator lying on a workbench. “This is a custom piece for a client going to the Kentucky Derby, and this [a woven fedora embellished with silk ivory flowers] is for a client going to the Central Park Conservancy luncheon this fall," she says.
