Mission Viejo Milliner Trims New Hats in an Old Family Tradition

When Carolyn Rowe designed and sold her first hat last year, the 12-year-old was continuing a tradition begun in the 1920s by her late great-grandmother, Carolyn McGuire, and which continues today through her mother, Mary Carolyn Rowe, designer of Carolyn Hats in Mission Viejo.

In Mary Rowe’s workroom, rolls of colorful ribbons hang from the ceiling, and clear plastic boxes are full of new golden dragonflies, ceramic fruit, semi-precious stones and other accessories.

Antique hat blocks once found in her grandmother’s shop now hold modern straw hats and Western prairie styles. Tucked away in paper are the special items from Rowe’s grandmother and from her mother, Mary McGuire Byrne: antique flowers, straw and fur felt hats, Swiss velvet ribbons, Swiss straw braid and Italian straw flowers.

Rowe combines the new with the old to create her hats.

She began her label in the summer of 1991 after she learned her mother had been found to have cancer. Rowe closed her interior design business and traveled back and forth to Wisconsin to help her mother during her chemotherapy treatments.

“For lack of something to do during my time there, I explored the attic and basement of my family’s 19th-Century farmhouse and found old hat blocks, ribbons, trimmings and even a few hat bodies that my mother had packed away,” Rowe said.

From this she got the idea of starting a hat business, Carolyn Hats. Because she had grown up around millinery, she wanted to keep a sense of the old and the new in her designs.

“I have the regular Carolyn Hats label that I put in my hats made from newer materials that I can reproduce,” she said. “The Carolyn Hats/Limited Edition label is for those that have the vintage materials. There’s only enough to make a few hats, and the materials can never be duplicated.”

Rowe’s hats are completely hand-sewn, which separates them from most of the hats on the market.

Rowe says she “was looking for something different to do, something more ‘hands-on’ and less administrative” than her interior design business, and she found it in Carolyn Hats.

For fall, Rowe made dark brown hats in straw; she explained that women in Orange County don’t wear felt hats much because wool coats are seldom worn. “Felt season is very short here,” Rowe said. “People prefer sisal hats in pill box and top hats shapes. My biggest seller for fall is an oversized black top hat with an antique veil and silver dots and butterflies.”

Big stove-pipe styles that are so prominent in London do not sell here because they’re impossible to wear in cars, she said.

Because this fall and winter’s fashions are minimalist in design, hats are going to be more important, Rowe said. “Big hair isn’t in style this year, so women are more willing to put on a hat. Plus I oversize my hats so they don’t smash hairdos.”

The hats, which sell for $80 to $200, are available at Something Moore in Laguna Niguel, Vaquero Mercantile in San Juan Capistrano and the Decorative Arts Study Center in San Juan Capistrano or by calling (714) 367-1597.