HAT LADY
Born Vanilla Powell in North Carolina, her father was a carpenter and farmer, whilst her mother was a seamstress and laundress for white people who lived nearby. She was one of seven children.
Vanilla was taught to sew by her mother.
The family lived in extreme poverty. Vanilla went to a one-roomed school in Nash County.
The highlight of her week was a church service on a Sunday. As well as having lots of gospel music, everyone dressed up in their Sunday best.
Most of the congregation were manual workers, so church was their only opportunity to dress up and look smart.
Vanilla loved looking at the outfits the women wore – especially the hats.
Hat historian, Craig Narberry, wrote, ‘The hat tradition grew out of the idea that you were expressing how God had blessed you. The more flamboyant the hat, the more God had blessed you’.
When Vanilla left school, she worked on local farms producing tobacco and cotton.
Shortly afterwards, Vanilla decided to follow her two sisters, Inez and Margaret, who had moved to Washington DC in search of work.
Vanilla got a job working as an elevator operator at Washington Millinery and Supply Company, owned by Richard Dietrich.
There, she was surrounded by all kinds of fabric. She studied every designer and every sewer – and learned from them.
The workers were allowed to take the fabric remnants, so Vanilla started sewing clothes. She also bought a hat frame to make headwear.
Vanilla said, “You weren’t busy all the time, so I would work on my hats.”
In 1942, Vanilla married army veteran Willie George Beane. It was during the wedding service that she realised her name was now ‘Vanilla Beane’. She burst out laughing. She said, “It was a love that was meant to be”.
In later years, she said her name always made people smile.
After the wedding, Wille went to war in Europe. He was gone for three years. They would eventually have three children: Willie Junior, Margaret and Linda.
In 1955, Vanilla was promoted to become a seamstress. The Millinery Company had finally recognised her talents.
However, she later left the company to become a mail clerk at the General Services Administration, a governmental agency.
Nevertheless, Vanilla kept sewing – and making hats – in her spare time. She built up a great reputation and, in 1975, was inducted into the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers Hall of Fame.
Vanilla retired from her job in 1979.
That same year, her former boss, Richard Dietrich, decided to move his millinery company to Maryland.
Vanilla was allowed to buy all their supplies, and she opened her own shop in the Manor Park area of Washington DC. It was called ‘Bene Millinery and Bridal Supplies’.
She worked six days a week. Vanilla was helped at weekends by her daughters – and one of her grandsons after school each day.
However, in 1980, tragedy struck when her son, Willie Junior, was killed in a boating accident.
Vanilla made a variety of hats. She catered for the local black community but also made high-end hats for the city’s elite. The most expensive retailed at $500. She even sent items to the UK each year, for people attending Royal Ascot.
Vanilla continued to make hats in the old-fashioned way. She said, “Each hat unfolded like a colourful flower.”
Every hat was one of a kind. “Nobody wants to walk into a church and see someone else wearing their hat.”
She was asked to design a hat for the writer Maya Angelou, to wear at Oprah Winfrey’s birthday party.
Angelou was so delighted with it that she sent Vanilla a handwritten thank you note – which was treasured.
Vanilla’s most frequent high-profile customer was Dr Dorothy Height, President of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People).
Dorothy would not be seen at any public function without wearing one of Vanilla’s hats. The two ladies became close friends.
The hats Dorothy wore were described as, “the kind with huge brims, bows and flowers that matched her suits.”
Vanilla’s husband, Willie, died in 1993.
She was also honoured with a display at the Black Fashion Museum in Harlem.
She was widely known as the ‘DC Hat Lady’, had two ‘Rules of the Hat’.
Rule One: ‘Don’t match the hat to the outfit. Just buy a hat you like, and the outfit will come’.
Rule Two: ‘Never wear your hat more than one inch above your eyebrows. Slant it to look more interesting…and possibly even risqué’.
She added, “The rules of hat fashion are simple – not too fancy or too wide.”
For herself, Vanilla made small hats. “I’m quite shy. I don’t like a fuss.”
She has a hat on display in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. It is a green velvet hat in 1950s style.
When Dorothy Height was honoured by being on a USPS (US Postal Service) stamp, she was wearing one of Vanilla’s hats.
Dorothy Height died in 2010. At her funeral, President Barack Obama gave a tribute. He said, “We loved those hats she wore like a crown.”
Vanilla kept working until she was well over one hundred. “If I had to stay at home, I would go mad.”
There is a vintage-style call box outside the National Council of Negro Women’s headquarters in Washington DC. Inside it is a painting of women wearing her hats (including Dorothy), but above it is a sculpture of a hat.
When Vanilla was 99, a young artist called Benjamin Ferry was walking his dog past her shop. Intrigued, he went inside – and asked if he could draw her. The picture was presented to Vanilla on her hundredth birthday.
The Washington DC local authority declared September 13th as ‘Vanilla Beane Day’.
Her granddaughter, Jeni Hansen, said, “What’s remarkable to me is that my grandmother doesn’t follow the latest fashion trends. All of her designs are ones she thinks up, the intricate folds and layers made up by techniques she practices and perfects.”
Vanilla used the same Singer sewing machine for over seventy years.
Just after her hundredth birthday, Vanilla was contacted by a church pastor, asking if she could make 180 hats as Christmas presents for the young girls in her congregation. She duly obliged.
There is a society of women in Washington DC, called the ‘Rogue Hatters’. To be a member, you must own one of Vanilla’s hats. Its founder, Shelley Watkins, owns 75 originals.
She was asked what her advice for young people was. Vanilla responded, “Just keep working and treat people right. Try to help everybody.”
Vanilla received many different awards including, just one month before she died, ‘The Mayor’s Award for Distinction in the Arts’.
At Vanilla’s death, the Mayor of Washington DC, Muriel Bowser, said, “She was an inspiration for generations of black women and for anyone who ever thought about turning their talent into a business that you love so much you stay at it into your hundreds.”
Her former employer, Richard Dietrich, said that hiring Vanilla, “Was one of the best moves of my life.”
RIP – Retirement’s Impulsive Purchase
