It’s a crisp, sunny morning in late March, 40 days before the Kentucky Derby.
I’m in a small studio in downtown Manhattan with a showroom filled with handmade hats. One of this week’s to-do items: One hat requires 150 handmade silk roses, each representing the uninterrupted history of the Kentucky Derby. Each rose is individually cut and sewn on site.
“So far, we’ve made 44 roses,” said Carol Sulla, director of operations and sales for Christine A. Moore Millinery.
This leaves “only” 106 roses to sew before the first Saturday in May.
Christine Moore is the woman behind many of Derby’s most coveted hats. She began her early career working on Broadway shows before opening her own shop and focusing on millinery (the craft of hat making). Moore was the first milliner at the Kentucky Derby and in 2022 received the title of “Kentucky Colonel” from Governor Andy Beshear.
Celebrities who have worn her hats are A-listers — Katy Perry and Jennifer Lopez are among her many clients — and Moore’s hats have also appeared in “Lady,” “Nashville,” and “The Carrie Diaries” and other shows. During Derby hat season (which starts around January), they will send out over 1,000 hats, all of which are designed and made in this small studio.
Now I’m here looking for my derby hat.
In 2009, Patty Ethington wore a Christine A. Moore hat that would one day be housed in the Kentucky Derby Museum. (AP Photo/Patty Longmire)
Moore’s most famous hat may have come from the 2009 Kentucky Derby. three people. A photo from that day went viral, and the rest is pretty much history: The hat ended up spending 10 years at the Kentucky Derby Museum. Ashington is now famous for its legendary derby hat. “The bigger the better,” she said.
This year, to mark the 150th anniversary of the derby, Ethington broke out the big red cap and brought it back.
“The first one Kristen made for me is the one I’m going to redo this year,” Ashington told me. She and Moore worked together to adapt the hat to the new costume without making any irreversible changes. “We changed the hat to black so I could add a little different style to it, but I could still bring it back to the original red hat that was in the museum.”
For Derby attendees, the dress-up fashion competition is as much of an attraction as the game itself, and respecting history is an important part of their thinking, especially on its 150th anniversary.
“I started planning my Derby outfit probably three months ago, and I knew I wanted to pay homage to the Derby,” said Priscilla Turner, another of Moore’s clients. “I really want to get to the level of other people I know.”
A Singer sewing machine sits in Christine Moore’s millinery studio in New York.
For Moore, preparing her clients for “the most exciting two minutes in sports” requires hundreds of hours of careful planning and rigorous work.
The reality is that millinery, like horse racing, is a numbers game.
The daughter of an engineer, Moore developed an interest in math as a child but fell in love with theater in high school and pursued a degree in costume design and art at Kutztown State University.
It all came into focus when she teamed up with a milliner at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theater. Perhaps thanks to her father’s engineering genes, Moore realized she had a brain for precise measurements, and her flourishing in designing and sculpting fueled her creativity. In 1990, she moved to New York to work with famed milliner Rodney Gordon, whose work has appeared in countless Broadway shows.
Four years later, Moore took the plunge and opened his own store on 34th Street. She had no idea how her business would develop, and she didn’t see herself as a derby hat maker. She knew a thing or two about horse racing, but it wasn’t until she was invited to speak at a boutique in Louisville in 2000 that she fully grasped the connection between fashion and horse racing. She packed three hats for the trip, completely unaware of the appeal of Derby fashion, and when attendees snapped them up, she knew she’d found her niche.
Moore’s schedule is now packed with trunk shows and other game appearances, including the Arkansas Derby and Florida Derby. She was on call in Louisville for Derby week — making hats, meeting with clients and making last-minute emergency adjustments.
While Moore has earned her fair share of fame, her business model remains deliberately mom-and-pop. Her husband, Blake Seidel, is her business partner, and Sula has been with Moore for eight years. Sula grew up 15 minutes from Belmont Racecourse but knew little about horse racing and came to Moore through the theater. She worked in props and was looking for something more stable than the contract work available on Broadway.
Many of Moore’s designers came from similar theater backgrounds, and Moore provided them with part-time jobs and extra income to sustain them through their aimless careers.
The store carries hundreds of hats, samples and fabrics.
Moore’s studio is on the 10th floor of a building on Manhattan’s bustling 34th Street, sandwiched between Foot Locker and H&M and facing the window display of the iconic Macy’s flagship store. To get there, I followed a narrow elevator up a narrow corridor that I can only describe as “grey,” passed through a fluorescent-lit stairwell, and finally arrived at an unassuming brown door. On the door was written: “Christine A. Moore Millinery.”
When the door opened, I stepped into the mirror. I was greeted by floor-to-ceiling color – bows, hat brims, flowers, ribbons, feathers, silks, striped hat boxes and vintage fashion posters.
A few steps through this showroom, I walked into the back studio, where the real magic happens: the room is small, quiet, but busy, filled with the hum of sewing machines and steam engines. Eight people are ironing, steaming, shaping, cutting, pinning and hand-sewing the hats and trim. Brightly colored spools of thread adorn the walls and countertops. A wooden board with dozens of rainbow-colored ribbons attached hangs above the air-conditioning unit. One type of Tupperware was filled with tiny sparkly balls, while another was filled with what looked like glass marbles. I can’t help but think that Taylor Swift fans will find everything they need for the Eras Tour concerts here.
Among the hats and decorations hanging on the wall are vintage fashion posters and laminated instructions:
Is it lined?
Do you need a comb?
Can it grow feathers?
Does it have beads/disco balls/tinsel/decoration?
Checking for rogue pins and pins?
Not sure yet? Be sure to check the specs, or ask 🙂
The Christine Moore store on New York’s 34th Avenue carries threads and fabrics in a variety of colors.
Moore is in the back of the room, shaping a pink hat, pulling it around a head-shaped block and then using steam to stretch and shape it. I was shocked that she pulled with a force that only the most experienced hands could accomplish with a confidence that nearly brought the fabric into submission. (When I first arrived, I was afraid to even touch the hats on display, fearing that an inadvertent squeeze might ruin hours of labor. “Just go for it,” Sulla assured me. They’re sturdy. “)
“It’s not like sewing clothes,” Moore said. “We never know what our product is going to look like. The hat material comes in and they’re just a blob.
This is the first step: steaming the fabric and building the hat around the pieces. Nearby is a binder filled with instructions on how to create a non-customized product line that goes into stores and online. The step-by-step instruction seems designed to leave no room for error so that the original design stays true to the designer.
“This is truly art,” Moore said. “You see a lot of milliners who are manufacturers and make these products but don’t have a real solid line.” She believes that in the United States and Europe, “only a handful” of milliners have “like Oscar Della A unique look like Oscar de la Renta.”
On top of that, Moore is allergic to imitations.
“Sometimes people give us another designer’s research, which I hate,” Moore said. “I prefer a blank slate. Every designer hates accepting someone else’s research. I took a look at it, but I never looked at it again. I don’t want someone else’s work stuck in my head. As a With a creative mind, it gets stuck and you keep coming back to it.
Her calling cards, and what draws so many Kentucky Derby attendees to her door, are her custom, sometimes painstakingly handmade designs.
“In addition to saying, ‘Yes, we can do that,’ because all these theater staff are trained to do whatever they need to do, we started making our own decorations,” Moore said. “I don’t buy them in the store. I make these flowers myself.
Moore is renowned for the fabric flowers she creates, whether it’s 150 roses to commemorate Derby’s 150th anniversary, or a delicate pansy for a pair of earrings. Within weeks, she will complete and deliver her client’s vision.
“She packed them in the most beautiful boxes,” Turner told me. “Black and white boxing with her label, carefully packaged.”
Christine A. Moore (left) helps our writer Hannah VanBieber (right) find a derby hat.
Back in the studio on a March morning. I’m choosing my hat.
Once selected, the hat will travel with Moore’s entourage to Louisville, and I will pick it up as soon as I get there, a few days behind them. This is a work project, so in some ways I’m going to make my choices by sticking to practicality first. I told Moore I needed a hat that I could “run around in and do interviews without worrying about it hitting people in the face.”
She told me not to worry about it yet. Let’s start with what I like. “Walk around and pull out anything that catches your eye.” I’m reminded of what it was like to pick out a wedding dress, which for me was filled with hesitation and anxiety. Walking through a showroom trying to find something that feels like “you” requires thoughtful consideration and a certain on-the-fly alchemy.
But Moore knew what she was doing. By the time I finished the showroom cycle, I had at least seven hats. Moore helped me try it on, putting a ring through my hair and wearing the top like a headband, while asking about my clothes and shoes and sketching out my vision for the outfit. She told me the colors and shapes.
We narrowed it down to a lively pink ‘Ashna’ headpiece made from hand-carved patterned paper Oriental straw, decorated with hand-cut and sewn silk petals and beaded centre. The most magical moment for me was when Moore walked over and gently pulled the hat down to my brow line – lower than I thought the hat should be! – Suddenly, everything exploded.
This is it.
For Moore, that magical moment happens in the middle of a day’s work. “Christine is so good at observing a person that within ten minutes she understands their personality and she knows what is not only right for you, but what works for you,” Sura said.
In Essington’s words, “I knew Christine could make this hat special. She would say, ‘You’ve got to trust me.’ ” I did.
Moore told me the goal is always to create something unique.
“You are part of the work of art; you are completing the work of art,” Moore said. “The hat becomes a part of you.”
Dana O’Neill contributed to this story.
(Photos by Nando Di Fino and Hannah Vanbiber, unless otherwise stated)
