When I am an old woman I shall wear purple


With a red hat which doesnt go, and doesnt suit me


So starts the poem, Warning, by Jenny Joseph, with a sentence that has inspired roughly 1 million women nationwide to don purple dresses and red hats and join the Fullerton, Calif.-based Red Hat Society.


Diane Siverson doesnt wear red and purple, but supplies members of the Red Hat Society, as well as other clients around the world who have a flair for high-end head fashion, with custom-designed hats.


Siverson, who owns and operates Lady Diane Hats at her home in Post Falls, has sold more than 800 hats, at prices typically ranging from $95 to $325, since she started her business in February 2004. Her list of clients includes 100 women from the Spokane area, as well as customers in the United Kingdom, Europe, Korea, the Caribbean, and Tasmania.


Siverson says she depends primarily on clients to provide word-of-mouth advertising about her hats, and so far, that business strategy has been paying off.


There are three kinds of communicationtelegraph, television, and tell-a-woman, Siverson says. Im relying on the tell-a-woman.


Lady Diane Hats, however, also speak for themselves, she says. Theyre made from a variety of fabric colors and textures, and are custom-engineered by Siversons husband, Ron, who is a mechanical design engineer at Wagstaff Inc., of Spokane. The hats have a tube and wire assembly in the brim, which gives the hat personality and allows the wearer to adjust it however she wants, Siverson says. The hats also are made to fit the wearers head size.


Siverson makes a variety of hat styles, including Victorian, cloche, feather mania, derby, and red hats. They can be decorated with brightly colored flowers, tulle, silk, and South African Black ostrich feathers that she purchases from an ostrich farm in Phoenix.


Siverson sold her first hat in 2004 on eBay to a customer in California for $76. Her revenues for that year totaled about $20,000. She says the Easter season last year was particularly busy, but that so far this year, May has been the busiest month. Business has been picking up again recently, especially because of the demand for her fall line of hats, she says. She doesnt have exact figures for year-to-date 2005 revenues, but says they are up from last year.


She says Victorian hats currently are her best sellers, although she also has sold lots of red hats at two Red Hat Society conventions, including 28 at a convention in Portland last month.


Victorian hats are popular because theyre like a fantasy hat, she says. You can become another person when you wear it.


Women who wear extravagant hats are confident and typically enjoy attracting attention, Siverson says as she picks up a hat from her fall line. The hat is black and is decorated with black feathers and faux leopard fur.


Most of my hats are sold to older women, probably because older men notice women in hats, she says.


Back in the earlier part of the 20th century, women didnt leave the house without a hat on their heads, she says. Older men remember those days and like to see those fashions again, she says.


One client told Siverson shed get her husbands attention by parading around town with her Lady Diane hat. Another customer told her that after she bought her hat, she wore it around the house and her husband thought she was nuts.


Siversons answering machine and e-mail box are filled with compliments from her customers. One woman, who attended the Red Hat Society Convention in Portland and whose picture is displayed on the Lady Diane Hats Web site, told Siverson she should win a medal for making women feel good and important.


Another woman who was planning to attend the Kentucky Derby last spring wanted a special hat for the occasion.


She wanted something over the top, Siverson says. She said, If Im going to wear a hat, Im going to wear a hat.


Siverson made the woman a white derby hat with flowers made from cream, beige, and mauve-colored fabrics and plumes of white ostrich feathers. During the Kentucky Derby, the woman gave five interviews to reporters, and her picture was on the front page of the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper, second in prominence only to Giacomo, the winning horse, Siverson says.


She felt so special wearing that hat, Siverson says. Im happy to have her living like a queen for a day.


She says many of her clients are from the South or the East Coastand one client has bought 15 hats. A customer from New York told her, We girls over here still like to play dress up.


Party in a box


Siverson ships her hats in large boxes filled with balloons to stabilize them. Clients have said they enjoy receiving the packages in the mail and finding a party in a box. Shes sending two hats to Germany for a reenactment of the American Civil War. Those hats are beige with pink and cream-colored roses and black feathers. Theyre made entirely of silk, and she priced them at $400 each.


She also recently received orders for five hats that will be used in a musical called, Chita Rivera: The Dancers Life, which will open at Broadways Schoenfeld Theatre this winter. In addition, she fills special orders for an annual meeting in Michigan that celebrates the 1980 movie, Somewhere in Time, which was set largely in the Victorian era.


Locally, Siverson has donated one of her Victorian hats to the Post Falls Historical Societ. She also invites groups of women from Spokane to her house for mini-tea parties to look at and try on her hats.


She made her first hat last February, after she woke up one morning and told her husband, I think Im going to make hats. Before that, she made flower bouquets for local farmers markets, and planted 7,000 marigolds and petunias in her front yard.


She says she has sewn her entire life, and made her own clothes in elementary school.


Last year, she decided to put together an idea book of hats.


At night I wake up with ideas for new designs, she says. I just cant shut off that creativity.


The basement of the Siversons home is filled with hat-related materials and equipment. Boxes are filled with thousands of tiny flowers. Bolts of fabric, including silk, lace, and tulle, hang on the walls. Hats in various stages of development are scattered throughout the room.


Siverson has six sewing machines. She says that to make a hat, she starts with a piece of fabric, cuts it out, and stitches it together using a sewing machine. She inserts the tube and wire assembly into the brim, and then the fun begins with the decorating. She dyes fabrics and feathers to match her clients outfits or other specifications.


The nice thing about a hat is that you dont have to worry about your hair, but you do have to have an outfit to go with it, she says.


Some hats can take up to seven hours to make, but on average they take about three hours, she says. She can make three hats a day comfortably, she says.


Siversons next show will be at the end of November at the Victorian Country Christmas Festival, in Puyallup, Wash. She says she will take 150 hats to that festival, and also plans to sell custom-made shawls there. She says that if her shawls are popular at the festival, she may branch out into the shawl and scarf markets.


She says that when Ron retires in a few years, they plan to travel the country and sell Lady Diane Hats. If the business continues to grow, she says she will consider hiring a few employees.


This is a dream come true for me, Siverson says. Were not out to make a killing, we just want to supplement our retirement and have fun.