Hattitude by 33-year-old Christina Lichy has just showcased at Vancouver Fashion Week. Coming from a small village 50km from Copenhagen, where she grew up with her parents and younger sister, she played handball most of her life, before moving to Vienna. She still goes to games as often as possible. “I also love running, taking 2-3 half marathons per year, but I also love unhealthy food, which means the running doesn´t show on my body! Reading books, watching old movies, knitting, theatre and concerts, are for me the best ways to relax, that or going out in the countryside for a long walk with my partner,” she said.
She got her first hat when she was four years old, a Rosa straw hat with lavender purple ribbons, which is still somewhere at her parents’ place, but only got into fashion after high school graduation. She took a short education for seamstress course before going out in the world as a traveller´s guide for different Danish companies. “Then I moved into an old house with my boyfriend back then, and at the same time started my millinery training. During seamstress school, we had one-week doing hats, and there I found out what I really wanted to become. I was trained mainly by Per Falk Hansen, Copenhagen, hat maker of HRH Queen Margrethe of Denmark.” Two internships in Vienna brought her back to Austria after her Diploma.
Starting her label in 2011 because she “wanted to do her own work,” she values traditional handwork in her creations. The name originates from ‘Hats’ and ‘Attitude,’ because “you can´t have one without the other,” and she draws inspiration from old movies and her great-grandmother, who she said had a great style, classic, but who was also very chic for her time. “I love the process of starting a hat and seeing where it ends. I never do sketches; I just start and get going. Sometimes it goes super; sometimes I end up throwing an entire hat out. I make every piece myself, though once in a while I get some help from a friend who will then sew in the headband and label and another friend helps me in fairs and bigger events, such as VFW,” she said. Her future goals are to get her own little atelier and not having to work in as a salesperson in a shop anymore. Social media has helped her to get noticed from around the world, and she is very excited about Vancouver fashion week.
