When I wore a hat to my sister's wedding in 1981, they complimented me, apparently I looked beautiful with that hat. Since that day my interest in hat fashion has grown.
During our first bicycle trip in China in 1990, I bought the first ethnic hat. It then cost 1,500 BF, according to the seller it was a hat of the imperial family (see photo). Then we came back with #headdress from every trip, family and friends also brought hats. When I started an international career as an education advisor in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Kenya, Mali, Congo and Yemen in 2003, the collection grew, which currently consists of 160 hats.
The hat collection is of course not complete, the largest number has been collected in Asia and Africa because I worked and traveled in these continents.
The collection has been put together on the basis of my personal interest in peoples and their rituals, the aesthetic experience of shapes, materials and colors. It is fascinating to see how the beautiful creations, bound by the social and religious conventions of the communities, were made with local materials. Many hats were not labeled, so during the past year I did an enormous amount of research into origin, context, materials, rituals, historical backgrounds.
The material is so interesting that I decided to organize an exhibition to share my experience with a wider audience:
Hats off… the World.