Meet DeAnna Gibbons | Milliner

We had the good fortune of connecting with DeAnna Gibbons and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi DeAnna, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
Often in the beginning of a career, especially as a self-employed person, working 6-7 days can be necessary for staying on top of everything. About 9 years ago I stopped selling my hats to stores and started offering hats directly from my studio. It was the right time in my career to slow down, stop traveling for work and spending all of my time in the studio designing and producing hats. It has made a huge difference in terms of having more personal time to spend with friends and family plus now there is more time for professional costume projects and art making!

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?

Hand making hats in the millinery tradition, blocking straw and felt over wooden forms is fashion but it is also an art form with a lot of room for personal expression and that definitely keeps me excited about my craft. My studio is unique for the individuality of our ready to wear and custom made head wear. We use a lot of specialty vintage trim from different eras that I have collected over the years.

People really love coming into the studio and seeing how the hats are made. Having a hat made for you that fits really well, especially for people who don’t have a standard head size is a very satisfying experience. As well as offering hats to individuals I make specialty headwear for musicians and performers.

Working with costume designers I have built headwear for opera, theater and dance. Costume headwear for performance is very technical and interesting to build. Sometimes we are building for traveling shows that have to withstand a year of hard use, worn over wigs often while someone is dancing or singing! I worked in several costume shops over the years where I learned to use specialty materials and techniques for costume construction.

It is definitely important to always be learning and challenging yourself. Millinery is a skill that is passed down from generation to generation. One of the things I am really proud to be part of has been mentoring young designers and offering workshops to teach hat making. Several of my students have gone on to start their own hat making businesses. There is a real beauty to playing a part in someones creative lifecycle.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?

San Francisco has a lot to offer, one of my favorite places right now is Tunnel Top Park in the Presidio, it is a new park that has an amazing view of the San Francisco Bay with super comfy places to picnic. A picnic at Tunnel Top followed by a walk down to Crissy Field for a walk at the beach is a nice way to spend a day. I love going to the museums, Golden Gate Park has two of my favorites The DeYoung Museum and The California Academy of Sciences, right across from each other. While you are there take a walk in the Botanical Garden or visit the Japanese tea garden. Another really great spot to look at contemporary art is the Minnesota Street Project that holds several galleries all in one place.San Francisco Ferry Building is full of great restaurants and you can head in either direction afterwards for a walk down the Embarcadero for great scenery along the Bay.

For food there are so many great places to eat. In the Mission District my favorite places are La Torta Gorda, El Buen Comer, El Nuevo Frutilandia especially for the fresh juices, La Taqueria and Le Dix-Sept Pâtisserie.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?

There were many mentors along the way. The most influential were definitely my fashion design professors and the jobs I had during and right after college. In the garment industry in Los Angeles I quickly learned that small independent studios run by female designers were the best fit for me. They were the first role models I had for learning how to be an entrepreneur. The jobs I had with these independent designers were in stark contrast on the happiness scale to the other jobs I had in fashion with larger brands, those jobs were a bad fit for me but a great lesson about how much work environment mattered to me.Working in fashion, especially with the hierarchies and inequity made me want to leave the fashion industry.

I returned to school and studied metal arts and textiles as an art major and continued working with independently run studios. During this period I worked with an artist named Remi Rubel who was making costume bottle cap jewelry, she really appreciated my skill set and taught me about production work and how to push boundaries with material usage.

After college I continued working with Remi and also in a beautiful hat shop in San francisco called Coup de Chapeau. The owner Jenifer Mathieu was a gifted milliner who trained me in the art of traditional hat making. She was super talented and her hats were very avant-garde and bold; I think if not for that experience I would never have returned to working in the fashion world. So definitely, my mentors were talented artists and designers who showed me how to run a creative business and to celebrate your own unique approach.

Website: deannagibbonsmillinery.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/degibbons/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deannagibbons

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deanna.gibbons.millinery

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/deanna-gibbons-millinery-san-francisco?osq=deanna+gibbons

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@deannagibbons575

Image Credits
Photographer: Tim Isom