By Maggi Stivers
The Bemidji Pioneer, Minn.
BEMIDJI
April 29, 2011, was a big day in history.
If you don’t remember, that was the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey in London. It was also the day that Kelly Schultz had an inspiration. And a new business.
“I looked at my phone after I got up and there’s four text messages (from her best friend Sylvia), “Kell, you gotta turn on the TV, you gotta see these hats, you could totally make these,” I turn on the DVR, click the TV on and I’m like “Wow, they were amazing,'” she said. “And I was like, ‘I wonder if I could make something that?'”
During the William-Kate wedding, a great deal of media attention centered around the hats, or fascinators, worn by the female attendees. And who designed them.
Figuring out how exactly to built the fascinators was a tricky process, including what materials would work best. While researching different options, she came across an online video explaining how Philip Treacy, an Irish hat designer who is based in London, makes his creations and what materials he uses.
“The only material I could come up with was buckram and it’s a cotton material, so you can wet it down and mold it into different things,” said Schultz, who also is the radio play-by-play announcer for BSU Women’s Hockey.
Another struggle was figuring out what to use as a mold when building fascinators. You can by molds, but they can run in the hundreds of dollars.
“I first tried using the bottom of the tupperware bowl, that didn’t work,” she said. “Because I have my little workout area, I have my little medicine ball. It’s about the same size as a person’s head.”
Schultz draws a lot of her inspiration from television. “Christina Aguilera, a couple years ago, on ‘The Voice’ had been wearing this one that looked like, my husband said ‘A pizza pan’ and I said ‘Huh, I could make something like that.’ So then I came up with an idea to do something that was more round and obnoxious.”
The inspiration for the name of her business, Angeline Alice Millinery, came from her two grandmothers.
“Angelina and Alice, my two grandmas grew up in the 20s, ya know, early 1900s and everybody wore hats, whether they were going to the grocery store or dinner, church, whatever,” she said. “So it was my tribute to those two women who I always knew were wearing hats.”
Schultz fascinators are currently available at Shannon’s Art and Soul, 313 Beltrami Ave., and online at www.angelinealice.com.
