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“MeMadeMay (2020), day 10. It’s a super lazy Sunday, and I’m not going out today (rain. So much rain.) so I didn’t bother ever putting on real clothes. So I’ll show off my stack of Me-made hats. (This isn’t all of them.)

I took a millinery class at Columbia College Chicago a few years ago, which is where the headdress and pillbox come from. (The headdress is a knockoff of one worn by Myrna Loy.) The apple hats are from a Simplicity pattern from the 70’s. (Simplicity 9644 from 1971, in point of fact.)”

The photo of the stack of hats on my head may or may not be a direct reference to the children’s book Caps for Sale. (This is the affiliate link, y’all. I am more than happy to shill for delightful children’s literature.)

There are certain days when MeMadeMay gets really difficult for me, and it’s really any day that I can’t go outside, for whatever reason. This always strikes me as a little funny, because there are a LOT of participants who shoot every outfit against the same wall in their house, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it just doesn’t interest me. (To do. I follow plenty of creators who do this, and that doesn’t bother me, it’s just not who I am as a person.) …It probably doesn’t help that I don’t actually have a single inch of bare space in my apartment. I have taken photos in the apartment over the years, but I really, really hate doing it and it feels like I’m failing somehow.

That said, it’s always fun to have what I call a “contingency day”. You’ll end up seeing it happen exactly once every couple of years. I’ll pull out all my hats, or all my socks, or all my identical copies of… whatever, and just take really dumb photos. And it really helps break up the monotony if, for example, the weather is just wretched the whole month (half of my makes are shorts, as it turns out).

And how many times do you get to see someone who’s made a bunch of hats? I really love millinery, and the class I took when I was in school was fabulous. (I don’t miss having band-aids on literally every finger from stabbing myself with the curved needles though.) It’s not a skill I’ve kept up with very well (though I did make at least one headdress for a friend when I was still doing burlesque), but I suppose that’s the problem with having 87 million interests. And I really don’t wear hats very often anymore, with the exception of those apple hats. I do have a really extensive collection of vintage hats, and I used to wear them frequently, but my current lifestyle doesn’t lend itself so well to swanning around.

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“MeMadeMay (2020) day 5. A twofer, also an all-accessories day. I made the hat ages ago, and the belt in about an hour, two days ago. I feel like, I definitely love making vintage dresses and embracing my glamorous side, but on the days that I just want to be comfortable and casual, my first love has always been the slightly funky corner of the 70’s.”

Oh boy, do I remember this day. I really can’t remember all the circumstances, but this was still pretty early into the time when Kenneth was helping me take my photos for MMMay, and this was one of those days where he had a lot of suggestions and I just… didn’t want any of them, and it was really frustrating me. So I ended up wandering into the square, in the rain, and doing photos myself. And if you’re looking at the pictures, you can’t even tell, so that’s nice. The hat is, perpetually, Simplicity 9644 and the belt is Butterick 4497.

This also feels like one of the first times that I was really trying to find some kind of words to describe my personal style. I had a lot of self-consciousness for awhile about my style, mostly because you see a lot of really successful vintage style accounts on social media, but at the time when I was really getting into making my own clothes, they were primarily 40’s/50’s leaning. I really had difficulty coming to terms with the fact that I really wasn’t going to be the kind of girl who was going to set her hair every night and wear dresses all the time, because it was just such a beautiful fantasy. And because I always sort of felt like there was some kind of invisible roadblock that kept me from being as accepted and appreciated as I felt like maybe I should have been, and my inability to just fully capitulate to that style felt like part of that failure.

I don’t, for the record, feel that way now. I still embrace a variety of styles, and I have fun with whatever I feel like wearing on any given day. Sometimes I feel a little guilty when certain things I’ve made languish in my closet (because I go through phases in what I’m wearing), but I usually come back to most things, and if I don’t, I let them move on to someone else.

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“MeMadeMay (2019) day 11. It’s my partner, Monterrey Jacques’ (Kenneth!) birthday today, and his favorite look is shorts with tights, so I was obligated to indulge. He’s the cameo appearance in the third photo. Also, yes, I did make the same hat in brown and black.”

Shorts are once again Simplicity 6946, and the hat is my OG Simplicity 9644, made from some random remnant of brown corduroy that I think I bought at JoAnns to make doll clothes. Maybe for a Craftsy swap? Did anyone else do those? I had a couple of really great swap partners (I STILL REMEMBER YOU, APRIL), and I also got majorly burned a couple of times, but I really liked making things for random internet strangers when I was in college.

Also, this is the first time Kenneth made an actual appearance on a MMMay post!

These photos are STILL just outside Beans & Bagels (well, across the street), but they’re on Leland, instead of Rockwell for once. You could probably train a whole garbage AI model just from my photos of this intersection.

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“MeMadeMay (2019) day 2! This one is a two-fer, as you probably recognize both the white dress and hat from other photos! It’s freezing and miserable here in Chicago and my hair is in terrible need of washing, so it was a hat day for me, but I wouldn’t normally wear this hat and dress together otherwise.”

Because I didn’t bother to mention it originally, the dress is Simplicity 4105 from 1952, and the hat is Simplicity 9644 from 1971.

One of the benefits of MMMay is really sort of figuring out one’s personal style. Before I copied the caption over from IG, I was looking at the photos going “well, I’d never wear those things together now… but I guess that was fine.” Surprise, I didn’t really like it then, either.

Also! I didn’t start enforcing my rule that I have to put on a face every day until… I think 2021. Why is that a rule? Honestly, because I like my face better when I get to decide what it looks like. I really don’t care if anyone else wears makeup, doesn’t wear makeup, I don’t care what you do to your face, and honestly, I don’t care whether or not you like what I do to mine. But it is part of my canvas, and by extension, it’s part of my mask, and having a face on actually makes it substantially easier for me to interact with other people out in the world. I hadn’t figured that out yet though.

These photos were taken on… Wilson and Campbell, across from the Lutheran Church. I only remember that specifically because I think I shot almost all of my photos by myself the first year (Kenneth was still recovering from his first go-round with chronic illness, and so I was still doing most everything by myself) and I stuck my phone inside the Little Free Library that’s on that corner to take these.

If you’re new to the blog, or to MeMadeMay, you can read my overview here!

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