A Hat Maker’s Cloche Encounters

When First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton fancied a fashionable straw hat for a White House event, one phone call to the San Fernando Valley did the trick. Searching for a traditional English bowler took comedian and former talk show host Arsenio Hall to the same place--Constance Jolcuvar’s hat shop in Calabasas.

Jolcuvar, an old-fashioned hat maker, has been appointed the head milliner for this summer’s Olympic Games in Atlanta. Last month she won her second consecutive MILLI Award, the industry’s highest honor, given by the fashion media and millinery buyers and presented in New York.

Her handmade chapeaus have appeared at such high-profile hat events as the Kentucky Derby and England’s Royal Ascot and she is the creative force behind custom-made hats for the J. Peterman Co.

Right now, Olympic preparations are taking up most of Jolcuvar’s time. The daunting task involves bringing to life hundreds of sketches by artistic director Peter Minshall, head of the Olympic design team.

Although Jolcuvar is excited about the project, she is sworn to secrecy by the Olympic officials and cannot reveal any details on the hats or the event.

“If we revealed it, it would lose its punch,” Jolcuvar said. “All I can say is that when people see the ceremony they will be overcome with emotion and they will be--well--just breathless.”

The hats, created by Jolcuvar and her team of milliners, will be shipped in late May to Atlanta for the July 19 opening ceremony.

Olympic spokeswoman Laurie Olsen said, “I’m not sure what the design team is working on, but these probably won’t be hats in the traditional sense.”

Jolcuvar, 43, left a career as a business consultant to study design and millinery at the former Otis/Parsons School of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

She also studied in London and New York and then apprenticed with Bob Mackie’s head milliner, Carlos Leon, before starting her own business in Calabasas in 1991.

From her quaint shop in Old Town Calabasas, the Constance Jolcuvar Co. has expanded, mostly by word of mouth, to become a national name. The first year, the company filled orders for 300 hats. Last year, Jolcuvar made more than 3,000.

Custom hat-making--with its hand stitching, molding on wooden head-shaped blocks and sculpting--is labor-intensive for Jolcuvar’s staff of four. Her creations range in price from $100 to $300.

She also designs and manufactures two or three styles of hats each season for the J. Peterman Co. catalogs, turning out 100 to 300 of each hat, depending on the number of orders.

The third portion of the business, creating hats and headdresses for performers, took off after she designed a red top hat and other fancy headgear for Janet Jackson’s 1994 world tour. A set designer who saw Jolcuvar’s millinery work for performers on board Princess Cruises recommended her for the Olympics assignment.

An appointment at Jolcuvar’s airy, sun-drenched studio includes tea or coffee along with cookies and conversation.

“I want my place to have that old-fashioned, comfortable feeling to it. I think customers like the way we treat them here,” Jolcuvar said. “We make them feel special.”

Deborah Hyde of Granada Hills, a neurosurgeon with a private practice in Canoga Park, attests to that.

“She really took the time to get to know my personality,” said Hyde, who bought a Jolcuvar-designed black top hat with an array of brown feathers cascading down the shoulders.

Hyde paid nearly $200 for her hat, largely because of the cost of the imported materials Jolcuvar used to make it. Some of her designs use Italian straw--which she said she uses because it’s softer and more malleable--while others are adorned with vintage gardenia blossoms from Czechoslovakia.

“I feel like I not only got a hat, I also made a friend,” Hyde said. “I can’t wait for my next Constance original.”