Everyone's Eliot: A Milliner's Tale

 For a moment, Patricia Pentecost and I sit silent among the sounds of a distant drum beat, slurpy spaghetti, and murmuring. It’s Sunday and the first time Patricia (Trish) and I have sat down together during the entirety of the Port Eliot Festival, where Trish’s Just Seven hats are nearly sold out. Yet as Trish shares her favorite food with me (a freshly-sourced clam spaghetti from Pastaworks), we don’t have the “tired-to-the-point-of-hating-people” fatigue that is sometimes a result of nonstop “sales.” In fact, as we watch the Just Seven tent from smooth, honey-color wooden chairs a potential customer meanders up. I can imagine the perfect hat for her sun-bleached hair and want badly to help her place it on her head. Trish looks at the woman, too, and I think she feels the same. Instead, we sit back to allow Trish’s niece to assist the customer, knowing that the right hat always finds the most adoring head. Kind of like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter. This is Port Eliot, after all.

I have been helping Trish in her Just Seven booth at Port Eliot Festival since Thursday, although she arrived on Wednesday to start setting up and won’t leave until Monday, after the Festival closing tonight. In case you haven’t been following along, THIS PART of my “Everyone’s Eliot” series explains how I came to spend days under the Cornish sky and butterfly-crested tent. As someone who’s worked events from cycle shows to vintage fayres, I am surprised at how easy and enjoyable the Just Seven Port Eliot has been. I think a lot of it has to do with the milliner and her superb product.

Typically Dutch, Trish is mum about the more difficult parts of her personal history until we’ve spent a few days together (and are under the spell of garlicy clams). “I never knew my father when he wasn’t sick,” she said, telling me about years growing up as a lower middle-class horse-riding girl in Holland. “I always wanted a pony. What little girl doesn’t? We could never afford one so I borrowed horses. When I moved to the UK I finally bought my own. She was such a lovely horse and we did very well together, show-jumping as a hobby. Then, the horse suffered a traumatic injury. I had to put her down. My Dad saw it all, and he bought me my first pony when I was 30 years old!” A young girls’ giggles spill from her mouth. I am so curious about this warm-yet-stoic attitude, a persona reflected within the dramatic folds, giddy adornments, and impeccable rendering of Just Seven pieces.

Every hat is one-of-a-kind, imagined by Trish and formed in an intensive process that she has practiced to utmost perfection (the Dutch are famous for being intelligent tradesmen, after all). She hand makes all of her women’s hats, from apt and colourful waterproof British caps to whimsical, high-billed, feather-tipped creations fit for Queens and witches. “The more expensive and high-quality fabric the easier it is to stretch and mould,” she describes. “First, I put a chemical on the fabric. Then I steam the fabric as I lay it on the blocks and form it. This can take anywhere from ten minutes to an hour.” I imagine that the hats folding over themselves again and again, with no start and no finish, must take the longest. “Finally, I let the hat dry for 24 hours.” This knowledge of how much and what kind of chemical to use is of the reasons Trish’s hats are so smart: Despite the fact that they’re peaked and pointed, the hats can be smooshed without losing shape. As an immigrant, Trish knows what it’s like to travel often. I think it’s also the reason one woman gladly buys two of Trish’s most theatrical pieces, secure in the knowledge that she can get them home in her camping bags. Or, maybe it’s the price (a hat that would sell for £130 in London is £55 in Plymouth and southwest England, even at privileged events like Port Eliot). Or, maybe it’s because Trish humbly talks about ponies for an hour with the avid racer. It is Port Eliot, after all.

Leaning casually in our seats, an empty compostable bowl in front of us, Trish and I observe the wandering crowd. “I love people watching,” she says. “There’s always interesting people everywhere, right? Everyone is interesting in a way. There’s a guy there with a shopping trolley – that’s interesting in itself!” she lightly laughs. “It’s interesting how people go about their business. Look at that guy pushing his kid in a makeshift wagon. I mean, why not just use a pram?” She notes these things in her very Trish way, non-judgmentally and amused. It is an off-hand delight expressed in her company brand, Just Seven. “I don’t know why, but everything in my life always involves the number seven. If they hadn’t been induced my sons would have been born on the 7th of the month. When I was house-hunting, I refused viewings for a house in Plymouth [UK] despite my realtor’s insistence. But when I finally saw how perfect it was and noticed the number was seven I just knew it was right.” This house now serves as her perfect studio and family abode. As she continues, listing seven after seven, I muse on her cool professionalism. Where an American like me would apply such synchronicity to the extreme, naming my company Always Seven or Completely Seven or Like, Totally Seven, the Dutch-English Trish coyly chooses Just.

Watching one of her vintage bowler caps walk by underneath a sign displaying “Free Hugs,” I think she might be doing herself a disservice (the sign-bearer thought a classy hat like Trish’s might bode better with potential customers than the leopard-print, goggle-adorned helmet he showed up in). Trish’s hats aren’t “just” hats. She touches up even those that are not her own creations, like the vintage men’s caps, in a feat of millinery. She uses the same mold-steam-spray-set technique so that the hats shine nearly as brightly as their original incarnation. They’re the highest-quality vintage men’s caps at the festival and yet the lowest priced. Trish can afford to price them low because she’s so efficient at reworking them. No wonder they sell like frogs in a wizard’s market.

By now we’re totally relaxed, wiggling our pinkies to the drifting music. I discover one reason Trish chose to move from Holland to the UK: “British music is the best. Aren’t all the best musicians British? Right going back to Queen. Queen is my favourite.” I peer at Trish in her uncharacteristically flamboyant tulle skirt with butterflies (donned for Port Eliot’s eyes only) and touch my own Just Seven trilby, billed in white lace and a bejewelled feather, remarking, “I can’t see one of your hats at a Queen show…” At this Trish chuckles. “Well, there aren’t many Freddie Mercuries running around anymore!”

But there is Jimi Galvin, bassist of Mad Dog Mcrea, Trish’s second-favorite band after Queen and a local treasure. Just before one their Port Eliot set, Jimi moseyed into the Just Seven tent, unrecognized by Trish. As they conversed about Trish’s pieces, he commented how high-quality they were. Trish responded jovially, “They’re sure better than that one on your head!” Jimi chortled, “I’ve worn this hat on every gig for eight years!” Trish visibly struggled to contain her excitement when Jimi revealed his true identity. He left the tent with his old hat in his rucksack, walking directly to his Port Eliot stage in a shiny Just Seven. Later that evening Trish watched the show from the audience, glowing with pride.

Slowly, we pull ourselves from the chairs, disposing our rubbish in the bin (Trish might be British, but she’ll always have a Dutch care for cleanliness and order). In the Just Seven tent we find a father and son, returned a second time to try on an idiosyncratic blue felt wonderment. The hat is perfect for his job as a wedding poet. He spins the hat around, loving the fact that it has no front or back. “It’s like ten hats in one!” he remarks. The father eventually purchases his hat, a special present to himself at this fifth of his Port Eliot Festival attendances. Trish smiles serenely as he walks away. “The hats just sell themselves,” she titters. “He looks wonderful.”