It started as a joke but evolved into an art exhibition of rather unusual hats.

Let a room full of creative women loose with some random hardware and what do you end up with? The answer, as six local milliners have discovered, is wearable art.

Headwear and Hardware is an exhibition showcasing the collective talent of some of the region’s most prominent hat makers including Susann Treston, Mary Bryen, Juanita Henry, Bernice Patton and Amanda Macor.

As Susann, who headed the project, explains, the concept began as a dare but soon transformed into a dynamic test of not only talent but will.

“I said to Amanda Macor as a joke that I would make a hat out of flyswats and wear it to the Amateurs,” Susann laughs.

“She said: ‘Go on then, I dare you’ and that’s how the idea for the exhibition came about.”

Susann says the discussion started after the designers travelled to Wagga Wagga in New South Wales for the International Millinery Forum where Chicago milliner Eia Radosavljevic displayed a wacky collection of ostentatious 1930s-inspired head pieces.

“I thought why don’t we put all our experience together and come up with something a little bit different,” she explains. “And have a bit of fun with it.”

The result of the friendly challenge was a year spent grappling with the constraints of unfamiliar and unrelenting materials to create a vibrant collection of fantastical, yet wearable, hats and fascinators.

“We wanted to see what we could do,” Susann says.

“There were a few trials and errors. For example, you might think of a crazy idea but then the glue you’re using doesn’t work and it snaps apart so you have to move on to the next project. I discarded a couple of good ideas.”

Susann says though every piece was created with wearability in mind, the main focus was on designing pieces that would astound.

“The emphasis is on doing things that haven’t been covered before. Some are a bit frivolous but the point of the exhibition is for people to come along and be surprised,” she explains.

“When you’ve been around a while everyone says things like: ‘I wore this in my 20s’, so we wanted an exhibition where people couldn’t say they’ve seen this before.”

Materials featuring in the 25-strong collection of works range from feather dusters and fridge magnets to melted coat hangers and miniature bathtubs, although the unassuming observer probably wouldn’t know it.

“My aim has been for the item to look like an eye-catching millinery piece at first glance and then upon closer examination reveal the surprise of being constructed with unusual components,” Susann explains.

A similar approach has been used by Mary Bryen. In her work titled Black and White Challenger, white dust masks, O rings and florist wire are almost unrecognisable and easily pass for traditional millinery materials.

“After removing the wire nose support (from the masks) and applying fine black braid, I folded them into tulip cones. Fine white florist wire supports black O rings and black and white spray has been applied to the curling cane to complete this spotted hat.”

For Juanita Henry, who specialises in adapting vintage millinery techniques into contemporary design, inspiration was found in a range of obscure sources.

In her striking piece Autumn Leaves, Juanita uses thinly sliced discs cut from small avocado branches and dried in the microwave to achieve her desired effect.

“I wanted this hat to look like dried leaves being swirled and blown by the autumn wind,” she explains. “After sanding and three coats of lacquer, the wafers were wired on to a sinamay crown and secured with small beads. The fine white wire was enclosed in clear heat-shrink electrical tubing to give the impression that the support for the leaves was invisible.”

Bernice Patton, who was raised by a seamstress mother and a horse trainer father, has spent a lifetime dressing for the races.

In recent years her passion for remodelling hats evolved into adopting millinery as her hobby and trade. Her modern conservative style is apparent in her classic pieces including Clean Sweep, made from kitchen cleaning essentials.

“Unravelling the coppery mesh of a kitchen pot scourer and stretching it over blocked Abaca (fine millinery straw) provided an interesting texture for this hat,” Bernice says. “All is topped off with flowers, the petals of which are clean-up cloths.”

At the other end of the design spectrum, face of the Cairns Jockey Club’s Fashions on the Field and leading local milliner Amanda Macor has flouted tradition, putting a humorous spin on her creations. Bathing Beauty features a rubber ribbon-trimmed suction mat as the base while a miniature bathtub surrounded by a curtain of feathers adorns the top.

While some of the pieces in the exhibition will be available for purchase, Susann says many will remain with the artists as a memory of their millinery adventure.

“Millinery is not a full-time money-making job. You do it for the love of it. It doesn’t always equate to a dollar product at the end of the day but you do get a lot of enjoyment and the social side is always a bonus,” Amanda says. “That’s what drew us together in the beginning, a common interest and friendship.”

Headwear Hardware is on at the Cairns Regional Gallery, corner Abbott and Shields streets, until Sunday, July 20.

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