Angie's Hats
What you'll find: Milliner Angie Hall Sandifer specializes in creating fashionable, completely customized hats. Whether you're dressing for the Kentucky Derby, Easter Sunday, a cocktail party or every day, she can design the hat of your dreams. "As long as you know your head size, I can make it for you," says Sandifer.
She'll create made-to-order hats from a distance or arrange in-person appointments in her studio in St. Paul's Lowertown. "Customers get to select the type of straw and the type of cloth and the embellishments they want," says Sandifer. "I like them to have that customer experience."
She also offers ready-to-wear options for all occasions, and Sandifer has seen a rise in online ordering during the pandemic.
What you won't find: Yourself looking silly. "People will come in and say, 'I don't look good in hats,' " she says. "But they are surprised. It's all about finding the right hat for your head and personality."
Back story: Sandifer's mother and grandmother loved hats, and growing up, she did, too, says the Florida native. But she never pictured a career as a milliner. She worked in telecommunications until layoffs left her unemployed. To retrain, she took a computing class, and one assignment was to create fliers and brochures.
"I built Angie's Hats as a project," Sandifer recalls. Inspired by hat websites she looked at as a model for her project, she thought: "Maybe I should sell some hats." So she did.
Soon she realized she wanted to design her own, and the real-life Angie's Hats was born. She apprenticed with a master milliner in Wilmington, N.C., and trained further in Indiana and Oregon.
"It was all totally by accident," she says. "But people say that there are no accidents in the universe."
Get the goods: Shop angieshats.com or schedule an appointment: angie@angieshats.com or 651-208-4442.
