Old Hat : Mariaelena de Estevez Ruz creates romantic, vintage-looking toppers by combining silk flowers, antique lace and colorful French ribbon.

On the wall above her work table, Mariaelena de Estevez Ruz has tacked up postcards of paintings by her favorite artists--Max Beckmann, Ernst Kirchner and other German Expressionists.

“I like to be surrounded by art because it inspires me,” she says.

Estevez Ruz is an artist, too. She’s not only a painter, but a sculptor of romantic, vintage-looking hats.

The Expressionists’ ingenuous use of color inspires Estevez Ruz to choose the harmonious combinations of silk and velvet flowers, antique lace and colorful French ribbon that grace her hats.

“Color is real important for me,” she says. “Being a painter, I love color.”

For the milliner, this is an especially busy time of year. With the arrival of spring and the coming of Easter, the demand for her straw hats is at its peak.

From her garage-turned-

studio in Corona del Mar, Estevez Ruz makes her hats the old-fashioned way.

She begins with soft hat forms of fine sisal straw, called “bodies” if they have a wide brim or “hoods” if they’re made for a helmet-like cloche with no brim.

She shapes each hat by running it under hot water and crunching it with her hands. Then she presses the form over wooden hat blocks that date from the 1920s. The blocks, which fit together like wooden puzzles, are shaped like the crown of the hat. Estevez Ruz smoothes the straw over the block by pressing with her fingers, then crunches the wide brims in her hands so they’ll have fine creases when they dry.

“I want the hats to have character,” she says. “I want them to have a worn, antique look.”

Some of her creations have vintage silk and velvet flowers, but because the antique blooms are scarce many hats have new flowers that simply look old.

“Sometimes I dip them in tea to give them that vintage look,” Estevez Ruz says.

She decorates the hat bands with delicate scraps of antique lace that date from 1890 to 1905, which she buys from a scavenger of old lace in Berkeley.

“I like handmade things,” she says. She also frequents flea markets to find old lace and flowers.

Estevez Ruz uses her artist’s eye for color to choose the trimmings. To a toast-colored hat with a floppy brim she adds a single large blue rose with a wide blue ribbon around the band. She adorns a blue hat with iridescent purple ribbon and a cluster of hydrangea in shades of blue and pink.

“The hats evolve as I work on them,” she says. “I might do a purple hat with yellow flowers, or I might do something monochromatic--a blue hat with blue flowers.”

She recently created an all-black cloche with a solitary black rose, and a cream-colored cloche with teal ribbon and a small bouquet of blue flowers.

“No two hats are the same,” she says, trying on a bright yellow hat with a broad brim and a clutch of pink roses, an unusual color combination that somehow looks right.

With her big dark eyes, delicate features and black wavy hair that recently fell down her back but is now cut short above her ears, Estevez Ruz is the perfect model for her romantic hats.

“I grew up wearing hats,” says the 32-year-old designer, the daughter of Cuban immigrants and a Los Angeles native. “My mother always had me wear them to church every Sunday and to special occasions.”

She began designing hats three years ago, after making one on a whim as a mixed-media art project by cutting up an old skirt and lining it with newspaper.

“I took apart a necklace and sewed the beads on it,” she says. “It was my first attempt at figuring out the mysteries of millinery.”

Estevez Ruz enrolled in a millinery class where she learned basic skills for making vintage-looking hats, and later studied with a couture milliner who was “very intimidating. Everything had to be very precise--every stitch.”

“This is very non-traditional couture style,” she says, showing the slightly crinkled brim of one of her hats. “Couture hats have a very smooth surface, but I love the texture. I think that’s why I got into hats. It’s a form of sculpture.”

She prefers hats with a handmade look but still follows the strict couture methods. All of her hats have fine hand-stitching--glue is off-limits--and cotton Gros grain ribbon around the inside.

“Some milliners don’t even put ribbon in the hat,” she says. “I think it’s real important. A wool felt hat will itch your head to death without it.”

Two years ago her millinery art evolved into a business.

“I’d wear my hats and people would ask where I got them. I would make them to order.” Now she picks and chooses the stores where she wants to sell her hats. The Giorgio Boutique in South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa carries her hats.

“Some buyers will say, ‘I want this kind of hat with that kind of ribbon,’ ” Estevez Ruz says. She can’t possibly work with them. Repeating a design is almost impossible because the vintage lace isn’t something she can order by the yard. Her one-of-a-kind creations don’t even have style numbers.

The hats cost about $200, in part because she doesn’t cut corners. For instance, most milliners have substituted a cotton-rayon blend Gros grain ribbon to line the inside. She uses only “breathable” all-cotton Gros grain, the kind used by traditional milliners, which must be tracked down through antique stores. She makes about six hats a day entirely by hand.

“Each season I make hats the process evolves,” she says. “I’m always getting new hat blocks so I can make hats in different shapes.” To make a hat with a wide brim and low, flat crown, she stretched the straw form over an empty fruit cake pan.

Women like to wear the hats to show their individuality and to top off an outfit, she says.

“Hats are very feminine,” she says. “They make the outfit.”