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
Loreta Corsetti's sketches show color and shape ideas for spring designs. Corsetti (right) with Mary Lasky at the 2011 Service Club annual spring luncheon. Corsetti models one of her feather-trimmed creations. he would say, 'Why did you make it that color? compares to Philip Treacy. "When I look at his work Why did you put the feather there?'" and he looks at my work, " I'm not a minimalist. I'm definitely a more- is-still-more designer. we don't have the same aesthetic but we under- stand each other," she says. "There's so much " feathers, the dying. I'm not interested in mass production—I never have been." Now more than 30 years later, they still compare notes, showing each other ideas during their fre- quent Skype chats, shopping for fabric together at handwork, all hand-beading, the curling of the Mood in New York, and browsing vintage shops. Many of Corsetti's pieces feature intricate wire shapes, and she takes inspiration from local archi- tecture. "I love to walk through the Gold Coast and look at the wrought-iron fences and the beautiful detailed work in some of the old homes," she says. Over the last 10 years, she's collected trims, ribbons, and laces from all over Europe, and she carefully metes out her treasures on various designs, waiting until just the right moment to pull out an antique buckle from London or a piece of trim from Paris. Corsetti is excited about a hat resurgence that appears to be percolating. While fashionable soci- ety women have long been visiting her with dresses for which they'd like her to design a custom hat, she's now negotiating with major stores and sees orders trending upward thanks to the interest in hats created by last year's royal wedding. "It made younger women think, 'I love the [look], and now I have permission to wear it,'" says Corsetti. Her own aesthetic is vintage-inspired, lush, and feminine. "I'm not a minimalist," she says. "I'm definitely a more-is-still-more designer. Every hat that I make has an element of romance." She says the term fascinator doesn't begin to cover the range of options, which include what she calls perches ("because they're perched on the head— they have some lift and body to them"), whimsies ("a very light cap with a veil and some beautiful roses"), and cloches, the French word for bell, which "were worn in the '20s—they come down and shade your face slightly." Corsetti's Evening in Paris hat with Swarovski crystals, silk roses, and hand-beaded applique. One of Corsetti's closest friends and biggest fans is shoe designer Brian Atwood, who keeps several of her hats in his personal archive. "Her attention to detail and proportion is obvious, but she uses color and different textures brilliantly," says Atwood. The two met in fifth grade at Troy Crossroads Elementary School in Shorewood, Illinois, near Joliet. "We used to sit by each other because my last initial was A and hers was C," says Atwood. Corsetti recalls him looking over her shoulder as she doodled. "I was always drawing dresses and After all, hats are for everybody. "It doesn't matter what size you are, how tall you are... a hat, as long as it's proportioned, is all about physics," she says. "Staying on the head, that's your only limitation." By appointment only. 200 E. Delaware Pl., 312-640-6004; loretacorsetti.com MA michiganavemag.com 83 photography by david johnson; hair and makeup by frances tsalas for chicagoemergingartists.com; model: june park for factor women