In Chicago, our friend Christina Bevilacqua was a hat designer. She had her own studio. Her hats were cloth creations, with different colored floppy bows or felt flowers or etc. that could be snapped on, or off. We loved them. I still have one of Christina’s hats, a light yellow and pink floppy affair that is cloche-like in shape, with a band/bow that you can snap on at different points along the hat. Christina wanted to drum up business and of course this was before social media: you really had to work and get creative to put your name out there. Summer in Chicago is Street Fair Season, so one hot day, Christina, Jackie, Mitchell, and I went to a street fair, each of us wearing one of Christina’s creations. And we strolled about enjoying the street fair, walking advertisements for Christina’s work. The hats are attention-getting and we got a lot of attention which, of course, was the point. Christina got a lot of interest that day. We also got some sneers, from ridiculous people who never left high school. Who do those people think they are …. wearing HATS like that. I mean, that is the level these people were at. How DARE they. We heard one girl snicker as we walked by, “Oh, I guess they like HATS.”
Cristina is a very VERY funny person. The way she speaks is extremely vivid, and frankly melodramatic. A quote from her I still remember: “Every morning I wake up to hyperbolize.”
Along these lines, when we reminisced on our Hat Day at the Street Fair, Christina characterized it as: “Oh, that was the day when we almost got killed.”
