Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/61757
Style Setter crowning glory A s spring buds burst into bloom all over town, there's another type of garden blooming on Delaware Place: dozens of one-of-a-kind spring hats, painstakingly hand-assembled by milliner Loreta Corsetti. Spring is Corsetti's busy season, between the Kentucky Derby on May 5, the Service Club Spring Luncheon on May 10, and the bridal commissions she receives for summer weddings. This time of year Corsetti puts in 12- to 16-hour days, seven days a week, crafting complex works of art that are feats of engineering and take anywhere from 20 to 60 hours each to assemble. "I never, never get paid for my time," she laughs, adding that her own costs are astronomical as well. "Some of the straws that I use cost me $150 before I 82 michiganavemag.com MILLINER LORETA CORSETTI CREATES GORGEOUS CHAPEAUX THAT THE STYLISH SET COVETS. by susanna negovan even make the hat," she says. And in the next two months, she'll be working nonstop to churn out more than 100 hats, priced from $395 to $800, for fash- ionable women around the country. Corsetti got her start 25 years ago after graduating from the Ray Vogue College of Design, a now-defunct institution that focused on craftsmanship. "Back then, they taught you true couture," says Corsetti. "[The school was] known for technical excellence." Learning how to do 500 types of stitches by hand was part of her training—a level of rigor that she doesn't believe exists in current fashion-school curricula. That's part of the reason she is one of a handful of true milliners left in the country, with a level of perfectionism she photography by david johnson; hair and makeup by frances tsalas for chicagoemergingartists.com; model: june park for factor women