Los Gatos Weekly-Times Photographs by George Sakkestad Dale Lee works late into the night making hats in the living room of her Los Gatos home. Mad Hatter Dale Lee admits it. She's addicted to designing and creating her elegant chapeaux By Sandy Sims Los Gatan Dale Pifer--known in the world of hat design as Dale Lee--sits down in her rocking chair and clears a space on the table before her. She tears open a brown paper bag, lays it out on the table, and, with a pencil, sketches a shape on it. After cutting the shape out, she holds it up to her head, twisting it this way and that in front of the mirror to see if her design will work. It will. She works into the night, cutting the stiff buckram, a cotton fabric sized with glue. When her arthritic hands slow her down, her husband Darryl, a retired prostheticist who used to create artificial heart valves, esophagus parts,and veins, pitches in. Pifer wets the trimmed buckram and drapes it over wooden blocks that, with their rounded shapes, resemble heads. She pats the buckram down around the blocks, smoothes it down and then leaves it to dry. She'll get back to it tomorrow, after she finishes her day as the telephone systems administrator for the West Valley Mission Community College District. Two months later, on Oct. 25 at the Los Gatos Toll House, Pifer is Dale Lee, antique hat maker. She's a little jittery as she greets the women arriving for her third hat show. They are wearing their own creations, or maybe one Pifer's made in the past. One woman could be Star Trek royalty; her gold lamé hat disks stand out from her head at odd angles. Two women giggle as they enter the room wearing tall leopard-skin witches' hats and identical dresses; another woman glides through the door in a wide black picture hat with a bouquet of ostrich feathers spread across the top. Soon the room is filled with mostly hatted women chatting, munching salad and chicken and sipping iced tea. They are waiting to be dazzled by the parade of hats Pifer has created just for this occasion. Pifer's hats are not the popular straw or Levi hats, or Lewinsky beret of today. They are the hats of yesteryear: romantic wide-brimmed hats that coquettish women peeked out from under; close-to-the-head cloches of the '20s; dramatic hats with bold turned-up sides and feathers pointing skyward; hats covered in ruched satin, festooned with roses in sweet lilac and pink, or bold red and black and trimmed in antique lace. Each hat historically correct. Each so unique it's a work of art. Each with a name: Belinda, Ardis, Scarlet. In fact, Pifer's work is recognized in the art community. Her hats are on display in the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in New Castle, PA. They've appeared in art shows: in Canfield, Ohio; in Saratoga Rotary's juried art show, and more. This last February, the Santa Clara Chapter of the American Pen Women honored Pifer as an achiever in the world of arts. They also recognized Pifer, who didn't learn to read until she was 38 years old, for her accomplishment as an adult overcoming severe dyslexia. The dyslexia may well be the reason Pifer's artistic talent has flourished. When she was in school, she compensated with art to make up for her inability to read. It got her through social studies because she could draw beautiful maps. However, her artistic talent couldn't get her through the written test to pass eighth grade. "I thought I was stupid," she recalls. Helpful teachers tested her verbally, and she passed with flying colors. She made it through high school with a near 4.0 by taking almost all art and design classes. "I wanted to be the next Coco Chanel," Pifer recalls. She's been designing something or other since she starting making doll's clothes at the age of 8. Then it was clothes for herself, then for her daughters, her granddaughters, for dolls and teddy bears. She's arranged flowers for weddings, upholstered, made draperies and crafts. She never stopped designing, creating. But hats didn't come along till later. Another hobby nagged at her that would force her to deal with her dyslexia. Pifer had become interested in her family history--her mother's side of the family traced their roots back to before the Mayflower. As a fourth-generation Californian, she became particularly interested in native Californian history. She decided to assemble a book of native Californian stories. Instead, she ran smack into her dyslexia. At the time, she was working at Mission College, where a series of tests diagnosed her with severe dyslexia. The school set up a program for her. "I spent hours practicing reading on tabloid newspapers. Tabloids are written for fourth-grade level readers," Pifer explains. Eventually, she got her native Californian book done. Her interest in history would later dovetail with her creation of hats. About 18 years ago, Pifer met Ruth Stockley, her neighbor from across the street. Stockley was a self-taught milliner who made hats for antique car clubs, such as the Horseless Carriages of America. She taught Pifer to make hats for dolls and teddy bears. Pifer carried her tiny creations to Stockley for approval until Stockley asked if she wanted to make hats for ladies. Pifer was thrilled. "You make the 1920s hats," Stockley told Pifer. Stockley would concentrate on the pre-1916 Victorian hats. Under Stockley's wing, Pifer would learn how to create historically correct hats, researching the styles and fabrics in antique magazines and books. She learned about the myriad design possibilities, the materials, and then the market. Pifer has become so attuned to what styles were popular during which years that she noticed the hats worn in the movie Titanic were off by a couple of years. "That was supposed to be in 1912," she notes, "but the hats they wore were 1908 or 1909 designs. If these were women at the forefront of fashion and had just come from Europe, they would have most likely worn the latest fashion," she explains. She hastens to add, though, that women then didn't just toss their hats away. They often wore them for years. Pifer learned the painful lengths women in the early 1900s went to for their appearance. To achieve the revered 18-inch waist, they wore tight corsets and sometimes actually had ribs removed. They wore stays in their lace collars that were long and pointed and poked at their necks and throats, which is why they stood so tall. They wore wooden bustles under their dresses to get that little protruding hump at the rear. There were even special stools with small backs that women with bustles could slip their skirts over and sit on. And a lady needed her complete ensemble, including gloves, purse, and the crowing glory, her hat. Pifer and Stockley became very close. For years they took their hats to antique car shows, showed them around the Bay Area, and sold them. The partnership ended when Stockley died in 1991. "I feel like she's still with me," Pifer explains. Pifer didn't stop making hats though. "I love it," she says. "I'm addicted." If the state of her house is any measure, she might need Hat Makers Anonymous. "My whole house is dedicated to hats," she explains. There are piles everywhere, tall stacks of materials, vintage magazines, photo albums of hats, sequins, beads and feathers, and even a room crammed full of supplies and scraps. "My family won't go in there" she says laughing, "for fear they will be lost forever." Pifer has built a following that includes a jazz club member in Milpitas who owns 41 of Pifer's cloches. No matter how many hats she buys each year, she always buys one every October for her birthday. There are women wearing Pifer's hats in Georgia, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, New England, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Washington, Oregon, and across Canada. More than likely these women are parading around in antique cars. Saratogan Betty Lawrence is one. She owns several of Pifer's hats to wear in the antique cars that her husband, retired physician Bill Lawrence, has been collecting for 44 years. Lawrence has authentic outfits to fit the fashion of the year of each car. And for each outfit she has a hat. "My husband has bought most of Dale's hats for me," she says. He goes to the antique swap meets where Pifer sets up her booth. "He hurries over to her booth to check out the hats because Dale sells out almost as soon as she sets up," Lawrence explains. Saratogan Audrey Lynch bought one of Pifer's hats just because she fell in love with it at the Pen Women's award luncheon. When Lynch tried on the stunning white satin hat with little flowers and veils, she says "I felt so feminine, glamorous, romantic, so nostalgic, I just couldn't take it off." "You'll never wear it," her friends said. But she was not going to let this hat go. When her husband asked, "How much?" Lynch hedged as long as she could until admitting to $250. She doesn't care. The hat is one of her favorite possessions. When the models finish parading the hats at the luncheon, the ladies get up from the tables and rush to the back of the room where the hats are displayed. This is their chance to try one on. Several women make purchases and take their hats home for later--maybe for a ride in a 1912 Pierce Arrow. Meanwhile Pifer returns home to start again, gazing through antique magazines, getting ideas for more hats. Her husband putters in his garden or works at other hobbies, quietly available if she needs him to cut the buckram. [ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, November 11, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.