Sophie Cooke- Imogen's Imagination

One of the reasons I love Sheffield is the people.  The first thing I noticed when I landed as a fresh-faced 18 year old student (away from home for the first time and just a little bit lost!) was how helpful and friendly the folk of Sheffield are.  I'm from a small market town where most people know each other, but god forbid you might talk to a stranger on the bus or talk to the person serving you at a till point.  Nearly 17 years later and I stand by that first impression. 

One of the things that has been really important to me is the history of millinery in Sheffield; the memories people have of visiting hat shops and how even just walking past the windows made them feel.  I've always had a fascination and interest in social history and this project has really piqued my interest.  This hunt lead me to join a couple of Facebook groups to try and find out more.  The shops I have been researching were all open in living memory, just well before I was even a twinkle in the eye of Pa Cooke!

This search lead me to "meet" Andrea King, a font of knowledge about Hillsborough (where I live now) as well as being a jazz singer and a song writer.  Andrea has been immensely helpful with information about the key shops I have been trying to research for which I am hugely grateful.

If my belief that the Sheffielders are some of the friendliest people in the world was only strengthened by this interaction with Andrea, she firmly set it in concrete foundations when I received a message today containing this wonderful verse!

Thank you so much Andrea, we are really honoured and we simply can't wait to meet you  when we throw open the doors at The Hat Stand on 16th May


For The Hat Stand/Milliners of Sheffield

I have always loved hats, Some people think I am ''Bats"
But you know they suit me so well,  I can tell
Cos' folks chat to me and say
That is a lovely hat you are wearing today
''WHERE DID YOU GET THAT HAT''!!!!!

I have to say, Milliners walked my way
With dreams and ideas to glorify ''The Crown''
To match every gown and accessory
They will make you feel fine, as they did for me

So visit ''THE HAT STAND'' in the Winter Gardens this May
In Sheffield come for the day
You are bound to see something, That will make you feel ''Pretty''
''The Hat Stand'' Best Milliners in our City!!!!!

Copyright Andrea King..10-42014
Twitter @akcomposer

Why?  This is a question we keep asking ourselves with ever more frequency now we are just over 4 weeks away from opening! 
(NB: 31 days for anybody who is counting...we are)

1. Why are we doing this?
2. Why will people want to be involved?
3. Why will people want to come and see our shop?
4. Why did we have to dream quite so big?!?

Well, here are a few of the answers we have come up with.  We would love to hear your feedback and see if you agree with us!

1. Because we can!  We aren't the sort of ladies who like to let an opportunity pass us by.  We first heard about the Winter Garden Pop-up Shop being leased to Common People in early December last year.  Sophie and Amanda had a little conflab at a fair they were both selling at and the germ of an idea very quickly sprouted.  Siobhan was invited to complete the trio and we knew we had a formidable team. 
   
   The other honest reason is because we need to.  We are one-woman businesses with finite resources .  We knew that by combining our skills, knowledge, experience, networks and time (the most important factor!) we could achieve so much more than by working on our own.  None of us would have been able to take advantage of the opportunity to rent the shop space on our own due to business/work/childcare commitments.
   
   As business women, we also are aware of the need to promote, build and develop our businesses and hopefully increase our sales!  Honesty again, the truth is we love what we do (if we didn't, we wouldn't do it) but we do need to pay the bills.  However, the skills and contacts we have built up since our first meeting on 9th January are also important and we hope these will help us develop new working relationships across a range of business fields in the future.
   
   
   
2. We have been totally blessed by the amazing responses we have had from all our helpers in making our mad-cap ideas become reality.  If you head over to the Our Helpers page, you will see quite how many of them there are!  Some of these are folks who are friends of our businesses, some are people we have only met because of this project.  But why have they so generously agreed to help us?
   
   We don't know the exact answer, but we are very grateful!  We have always said that this project should be mutually beneficial for everybody involved whether it be in terms of promotion, portfolio building, sales, performance/work experience.  The majority of people we are working with are also small, independent or one-person businesses and face the same challenges that we do.  However, we aso want everybody to enjoy the aspects of the project they are working with us on.
   
   
   
3. So we now have a massive team of people involved in The Hat Stand...but why would any body else want to come an visit us?
   
   We hope that Sheffielders (and beyond!) will come and see us and join in our events because this is such a unique project in so many ways.  Who remembers the last time there was a dedicated hat shop in Sheffield?  We will be covering the demise of the milliner and the hat shop in Sheffield in a later blog post, but we can say that the last Yellow Pages listing for a milliner in Sheffield was in 1992-93.
   
   
4. We can assure you, this last question, we do keep asking ourselves this!
   
   We hope that by offering more than just a shop, we can get people interested and talking about wearing hats again...which is fun!  We have aimed to make our events as inclusive and interactive as possible.  We want people to join in and enjoy their experience and hopefully remember our names the next time they have an occasion in the diary which requires some headwear.
   
   Plus, we decided if we were going to make the most of this opportunity, we had to make sure we created as much of a splash as possible.  We aren't just doing this for fun, there is a very serious business side to it too, but who said business can't be pleasure too!
   

If you have picked up one of our flyers, seen the Events page on this site or been following our Facebook and Twitter pages...you hopefully won't have failed to see that The Hat Stand is going to be more than just a shop!

On Sunday 18th we will be hosting a FREE Fashion Day where you can come and see our models being made up by a team of Make-up Artists and Hair Stylists throughout the day.  Starting at noon(ish!) our three photographers will start their shoots around the Winter Gardens.  The day will culminate with a Fashion Show with live music at approximately 3.45pm.

During the Food Festival weekend (24th-25th) we will also be hosting a Mad Hatter's Tea Party with Zooby's Cafe (our neighbours in the Winter Gardens) along with a series of Milliner Taster Workshops.  These workshops will be lead by both our resident and guest milliners and do not require advanced sewing skills.

These events are all ticketed and booking is essential.  If you would like to book, simply use the contact form to reserve a space and find out how to pay.

Here at Hat Stand HQ, we are a curious bunch...not just creative!

We know that the Hat Stand is a unique event as we, Amanda, Siobhan and Sophie, have never worked together in this way.  We have sold individually in attendance at the same vintage and craft fairs,  but to work together, with so many facets to plan...this is new!

Although we all make hats, we each have very distinctive styles and it was this individuality that made us think how we could work together without treading on each others toes.  We also knew we could achieve so much more by working together than  we ever could hope to by working alone.

We do seem to have already established a few roles within our planning; Sophie is the logistics and networking, Amanda is the stylist and Siobhan is the social media wizard.

However, we have all learnt and picked up new things from each other as well as increasing our network threefold...you'll see quite how extensive this is if you have a nosy at Our Helpers page!