We recently connected with Nicole Sanders and have shared our conversation below.
Nicole , so happy to have you with us today. You are such a creative person, but have you ever had any sort of creativity block along the way? If so, can you talk to us about how you overcame or beat it?
The biggest block I’ve had was pretty early on. I officially kicked off Sanders Hat Company right before COVID hit, and right after the tornado knocked around my neighborhood, so I was forced into a break. With everything going on, I wasn’t able to work on hats, and when things started to normalize, it was after almost a year. I knew I needed a big change to get myself back into the creative zone, so I found a 12 week program in Florence, Italy where I studied under a hat maker there – and it really took my creativity and confidence to the next level. While I understand you can’t pick up and go to Italy every time you have a creative block, there are ways that you can get yourself out of your comfort zone and into learning new things! But, at home, something I find super helpful for tapping into that side is to have photos of things that spark the creative juices hung around my studio. I also keep a folder of images that inspire me, but I keep it put away and don’t look at them until I feel a creative block coming.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
My Sanders Hat Company journey began with a deep love for the art of millinery. As a hat enthusiast and collector, I began asking the questions that ultimately fueled the leap into designing and crafting bespoke luxury hats. Working on the show Nashville, I realized hat making could be a job, and not just a hobby, so I started taking an array of different classes and have studied under several different mentors and hat makers – taking me to places in Tennessee, Utah, and even three months in Florence, Italy! I specialize in one-of-a-kind (and sometimes personally customized) hats. Unlike mass-produced hats that can quickly lose their luster, I like to prioritize longevity. My hats are crafted from premium materials such as rabbit, coypu, beaver fur, and palm leaf ensuring they stand the test of time. I’m also committed to eco-friendly and sustainable practices whenever possible because I believe that style and ethics go hand in hand. I work out of my studio in Sylvan Park and you can find my hats online at sandershatcompany.com/shop, at a market (follow me on insta to see where I am!), or you can come into my studio and create a custom hat of your own!
In July of this year, my wife and I also launched M.A.D.E. (Millinery Atelier Design Experience) Nashville, which is a hat designing experience where you and your friends or colleagues can come and design a premade hat with us! We have several different customization options, and we are the most affordable hat design party in Nashville. We believe there’s a hat for everyone, and want to make sure everything we do is as inclusive as possible!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three biggest things that were most impactful for me were Curiosity, Continued Learning, and Patience.
There’s not a ton of resources out there for how to make hats and the hat community sometimes keeps their ideas and knowledge close to chest because the market is becoming saturated, and people don’t want someone else to put them out of business. I had to get really curious and learn about how things were made, and why different steps were taken, so that I didn’t ruin the materials I was working with. The art of hat making started a long time ago, and has changed a lot over the years with different manufacturers, but I’m a lover of the actual craft of hat making and like to do the steps myself to create a hat that someone can be proud of. We can call it slow fashion vs. fast fashion, but I want my hats to stand the test of time. So, to do that, I have to really be aware of each step that I’m taking and why it’s important to the art.
The patience goes hand in hand with the learning. Because it’s such an old art, a lot of the machines and tools are hard to come by and definitely don’t come with an instruction manual. They also almost always need to be altered to do a specific job, and it’s hard to find people to service them. This means a lot of tinkering with machines, and trial and error. You’ll have broken needles, torn up felts, and sometimes even find that your wooden hat blocks don’t match your wooden band blocks! You truly need patience and a love of the art to handle a lot of these set backs!
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m definitely always open to collaboration – which is really how we launched M.A.D.E., too! I am a lover of all things hats – I love to create them, but I REALLY love when someone takes home a hat that they’re excited about. Whether it’s one that I designed, or that they had a hand in designing.
From a collaboration perspective, we’d love to get our hats out there. With our custom hats, outside of just the collaboration when making a hat for someone – we’ve done photoshoots, we’ve designed for certain stores, and we’ve designed for festivals. We are always open to collaboration, whether it be brand specific or designing for a vibe.
You can connect with us via email at sandershatcompany@gmail.com, you can reach out via our website www.sandershatcompany.com, or you can send us a DM on either of our instagram pages @sandershatcompany or @madenashville
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sandershatcompany.com
- Instagram: @sandershatcompany, @madenashville
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095071336081 & https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094748125611
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/m-a-d-e-nashville/?viewAsMember=true
- Other: TikTok – @Madenashville
Image Credits
Laura Godwin Alexa King Stone
