Reaching the 25-year mark as an independent New York City-based designer takes some muscle, and even more so if your specialty is hats.
In the sparsely populated field of U.S.-based milliners, Eugenia Kim has built a following for her inventive and at times irreverent styles. To celebrate her brand’s milestone, Kim will host a cocktail party at the Efrain Lopez gallery in TriBeCa Thursday night. There’s also an “Icon” collection in honor of the anniversary that features 12 tongue-in-cheek designs from her repertoire, including an ashtray fascinator, a candy pink felt haircut hat, a distressed leather fascinator with what looks likes an everything bagel with cream cheese and lox, and the Matisse-inspired “Jonah” bucket hat feathered with fish motifs.
“Weirdly, one of my customers for haircut hats is Bill Murray. I had made some for Opening Ceremony’s exclusive men’s collections like one that was [inspired by] a ’70s businessman with sideburns. What I like about these haircuts is they remind me of Lego people hair. He also ordered one that was an Elvis [Presley] style with a little curl on the top,” Kim said.
Raised in Pittsburgh, Kim switched tracks at Dartmouth College from a premed route to creative writing after a monthlong hospital stay for a broken back made her question a profession that required so much hospital time. In the mid-90s heyday of Condé Nast, she took a job as an editorial assistant at Allure magazine and made the most of the corporate tuition reimbursement benefit to take a night class in hat design at Parsons School of Design. Unlike much of fashion, which is machine-made, the fact that hats are handmade, individualistic and three dimensional appealed to her.
Kim wrote front-of-the-book material for Allure after an editor went on maternity leave. “Not very good at working for someone else,” she didn’t show up on time and would duck out to sample sales, but she was a good writer and…
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