Guest Author - Norma Shephard

Irene of Montreal had a reputation for making any woman look beautiful. “It is the not beautiful ones I remember most,” she told me before she died, when recalling her days as a leading millinery designer. “It is that feature which is unique about a woman that makes her beautiful,” she instructed. The secret of Irene’s millinery magic was to fashion her custom hats in such as manner as to emphasize that feature which was most distinctive about her client. This made her hats and the women who wore them, unforgettable.
“Most women do not want to draw attention to a big nose, a high forehead, a long neck—whatever it might be,” she explained. “But when it comes to fashion and beauty, different—unique is good.”

The Montreal designer kept a file on each of her 3,000 clients and insisted that no woman leave her shop until she herself was satisfied with the custom creation, usually after three fittings. During the 1950s and 60s, competitors often lurked outside her Sherbrooke St. Salon after dark, sketchpads in hand in an effort to duplicate her work. Burstyn occasionally spotted them herself as she taxied home late at might. “I took it as a compliment,” she said. “After all I was not in the business of selling hats, I was a designer!”

And what a designer she was! Irene of Montreal’s clients numbered among North America’s social elite. A Montreal woman who apprenticed in the millinery trade in the 1950s, remembers, “A buzz went through the industry whenever someone was seen wearing one of Irene’s hats”.

“We made them out of the air,” Irene told me in an effort to explain the creative process, When asked about her favorite, she described a tremendous Breton style in tulle and organza, the brim of which rose three inches above the hair, then fell in back to barely touch the shoulders. The girls in the workroom had difficulty with it at first, insisting that they could not achieve what she demanded.” “Yes, you can,” Irene insisted, and layer after layer of bias organza was pressed and placed flat, one on top of the other until Irene of Montreal’s vision was a reality.

Inspired, artistic, creative, self-confident, and dramatic, Irene’s speech reflected her enthusiasm for excellence. In Montreal, she ran a more than successful millinery atelier from 1948 until 1976, when the entire hat trade fell into a decline. A number of Irene’s hats are housed at the McCord Museum in Montreal. Collectors should look for the Irene label or her distinctive black lace lining. For more on Irene and her hats see my book, 1,000 Hats (www.schifferbooks.com)