Sherri Hrycay finds timelessness in designing women's hats

Hrycay was invited for a third year to make a hat for the London Hat Week, an exhibit with 200 milliners chosen from around the world.

Sherri Hrycay is always thinking about her next hat. The Saskatchewan milliner operates Sova Millinery, where she hand-sews anywhere from 300 to 400 original hats per year.

“I have way too many ideas for designs and not enough time,” Hrycay said. “I think the ideas fester at night while I’m sleeping. On Sundays I steam out about nine or 10 hats, and then when I sleep I’m probably subconsciously thinking about them. Then I come here and make them during the week.”

Her knowledge is rooted in years of practice and training, and her reputation reaches far beyond the Prairie provinces, with such notables as the prime minister’s wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, former Saskatchewan lieutenant governor Vaughn Solomon Schofield, and internationally-known costume designer Marion Boyce among her customers.

Even as she chats with a reporter at her Saskatoon business, she is working with materials, cutting different pieces of newly-steamed felt and combining them into a royal blue hat.

“Do you mind? I’m always fiddling,” she says. “The felt I’m using is vintage. It’s worth its weight in gold and is 60 years old, but it’s basically brand-new. The manufacturer made it, packaged it up, and then I opened it 60 years later. So it’s like a time machine.”

Hrycay gets most of her felt from Eastern Europe, and it comes in large pieces which then have to be cut and moulded with steam over wooden hat blocks. The blocks are shaped differently, depending on the type of hat — fedora, beret, cloche.

Hrycay is originally from Saskatoon but spent many years working as a teacher in Calgary. Once she and her husband had their first child, she stopped teaching and took up hat-making as a side project. Hrycay says her initial interest in hats came from a love of Edwardian history and literature, like Anne of Green Gables.

 Her father-in-law was a wood worker at the time too, and carved Hrycay’s first hat blocks.

“Initially it was kind of a stay-at-home-mom thing. I already had a strong background in sewing, so I’d go look at old hats to see how they were made and then try and replicate that. This was before there was the Internet too, so it was a lot of trial and error.”

After moving back to Saskatoon in 2005, an opportunity came for Hrycay to take her work to the next level.

“My husband and I were lying in bed, watching fashion television and an advertisement came on with British milliner Stephen Jones, who is one of the top hat makers in the world. He was doing an anthology at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. My husband has always been so supportive, so he took me and our 18-month-old at the time to London to see this anthology.”

While she was in London, Hrycay took a master class with Rose Cory, milliner to the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

“Rose Cory is sort of the godmother of hats. After training with her, I came home and started doing art shows around the province and then in Alberta and B.C. Then came the Vancouver Fashion Week, the Ottawa Fashion Week, and it has just grown from there,” she said.

Over the years, Hrycay trained at many other master classes abroad and in 2013, she decided to open up her shop. It was first located in the Drinkle Building in downtown Saskatoon, and then moved to City Park three years ago. The shop has a charming general store feel, with the storefront opening up to a workspace in the back.

In addition to her shop, Hrycay hosts a yearly fashion show, does custom work, runs an online store and does art shows. She also does an annual calendar with “the Men of Sova,” a group of local friends who model her men’s hats for a yearly calendar. The Men of Sova actually made it into British GQ in winter 2018 too, which was an exciting moment.

One aspect she loves is having absolute creativity in her work, as no two hats are ever the same. John Costanzi, who is one of the Men of Sova and owns four of Hrycay’s hats, echoes this sentiment.

“I love the fact that I know there will not be anyone else wearing my hat. Each hat is made one at a time, and the only template about it is the style, whether it’s a fedora or something else. There’s nothing else that’s going to be the same; no two hats are ever the same. So I can walk down the street with 100 other people in hats, and mine will stand out,” he said, adding that it’s also a great conversation starter.

Beyond training with the Queen’s milliner, Hrycay has had a few other royal encounters. For the third year in a row she’s been invited to make a hat for the London Hat Week, an exhibit with 200 milliners chosen from around the world. In 2018 one of her hats was also gifted to Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex.

“The hat was a gift from the Government of Saskatchewan, and the gentleman who brought it there actually handed it over to Meghan’s personal secretary, who looked at it and said, ‘Yes, she will like this,’ and then walked it back to the palace. I received an official letter for it too.”

Hrycay decided to design a navy beret for Markle, because she knew Markle likes berets. However, she says there are some interesting politics surrounding hats which have prohibited her from wearing it.

“I had been watching to see if she was going to wear it, and then earlier in the year I was at a conference in Vancouver. A well-known Australian milliner named Carole Maher was also there, and her hats have been gifted to Meghan Markle too,” Hrycay said. “Carole said that the royals are not allowed to wear anything except a United Kingdom milliner’s hat. It’s different with clothing, but because of what millinery is — it’s such a British thing and they’re very proud of it — they cannot wear milliners who are not from the United Kingdom. But what they can do is they can get their own milliners to make something similar, or if she comes to Canada she could wear it.”

The hat block she used for Markle’s hat also has a unique backstory.

“When I was in Paris eight years ago, I was at an antique market and by sheer luck there was an old hat block there. The friend I was with said she had never seen a hat block there and she had been there a lot. So it was special and that’s the one I ended up using for her hat, which is a neat calling for that hat block.”

Hrycay tries to make it to Europe once a year too, in order to find materials in vintage shops.

“Their vintage shops have stuff that is 400 years old, so you never know what you’re going to find. I’ve bought ribbon from the Edwardian times, which was still in its original paper packaging when I found it.”

In addition to antique materials, Hrycay uses all-natural fabrics like cotton, fur and straw. When she gets new material in the mail she says, “it’s like Christmas and it just fires me up all over again.”

Costanzi says that when it comes to her products, Hrycay prioritizes quality.

“She’s really focused on making things the way that they’re supposed to be made. On top of that it’s also someone showing and doing their craft. Sherri cares very much about making you feel good in her product. She wants you to wear the hat and to feel confident in it,” he said. “So you’re getting something that is one-of-a-kind, done properly, and is made by someone who cares.”

When it comes to the art of wearing hats, Hrycay says that the first step is simply owning one.

“People come in and you can see they’ve fallen in love with a hat but they’re justifying it or they’re questioning whether they would wear it,” she said. “I always say that your chances of wearing a hat greatly increase if you actually own it. You have to make the jump into buying a hat, and then you will wear it. If it’s hanging beside your door and if you love it enough, you will put it on.”