Marilyn Feldman was a practicing psychiatric social worker and teacher for 12 years when she decided to pursue an avocation in millinery, the art of designing hats. Living in Boston at the time, Feldman enrolled in the School of Fashion Design, where she received a degree in millinery design.
Thirty-eight years later, after what she thought was retirement in Coronado, Feldman will be opening Marilyn’s Millinery Boutique inside of Sand Beach & Bikini on 10th St.
“What I’m going to bring here is one of a kind, no one else will have it,” said Feldman. “You want it, I’ll make it.”
While her hats are uniquely tailored to her client’s needs, her millinery work is as rooted in her family’s history and her career as a social worker.
At the age of 77, Feldman dresses in a style that would be called “vintage-inspired fashion.” But to her, it’s just fashion. Her white lace gloves complement her white-brimmed hat and the pearls around her neck. Growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s, it was typical for women to complete their outfits with hats and gloves.
As a girl, she used to wear the same outfits as her mom and grandmother. Feldman comes from a family of first-generation Americans. Her grandparents immigrated to Ellis Island from Russia when they were 16 years old following World War II. Experiencing life in a new country during that time engrained qualities in her parents that Feldman still emulates herself.
“My mother and father fixed everything themselves and my mom would make all of our clothes,” said Feldman. “She would make three of one outfit – one for my grandmother, herself and me. We were like three peas in a pod. Sometimes she would turn my brothers’ clothes into girl’s clothes, and she would just teach me how to sew.”
Yet, it wasn’t the process of making clothes that drew her into fashion. Feldman was fascinated by color, texture and design – elements she felt millinery offered creative freedom with.
“Making clothing was too constricting for me,” said Feldman. “I’m the type of person where I’m going to just take something and make it. You can’t do that with clothes, but you can do that with hats. You can make hats any size, any which way you want, and you can alter it.”
Her passion for hat-making was officially brought to life when she founded her company, Diamond Millinery, out of her Boston basement in 1986.
Since the beginning of that journey, she has integrated her work as a social worker into her love for making one-of-a-kind hats. In her early days, she volunteered for the American Cancer Society, going into hospitals and making hats for women who lost their hair.
However, she said the most central aspect to her career has been her decades of volunteer work with the Glamour Project – an organization that is dedicated to bringing joy to disadvantaged women living in shelters by providing them a day of professional beauty services including hair, makeup and fashion styling.
Alongside a group of volunteers, Feldman managed the fashion styling aspect of the program, often incorporating her handmade hats into the outfits.
“The women we help are the most abused of our society,” said Feldman. “We want them to feel really special. The message after is always, ‘Do you remember what you used to look like?’”
After the glamor process is over, each woman receives a professional photoshoot to show off the new look, alongside a blank key.
“We tell them the key could be for a car or house someday,” said Feldman.
The Glamour Project was founded in Los Angeles by Kara Fox and Evvy Shapero, but Feldman expanded it to serve sheltered women in Boston and San Diego.
As of Nov. 2, upon moving her millinery to a physical store, her hope is to fill a “niche” in Coronado. Drawn to the broad inventory of Sand, Beach & Bikini, a consignment store owned by Sandy Johnson that Feldman will be operating out of, she plans to elevate her millinery to offer more unique services.
While Feldman will be in store twice a week and available by appointment, she and Johnson also hope to offer new tailored experiences to shoppers – including styling services for brides and religious ceremonies, in-shop celebrations for special events such as birthdays and children’s tea parties, millinery workshops and a shopping experience that captures the essence of “vintage meets modern.”
Many of Feldman’s hats will appear along the walls of Sand, Beach & Bikini, specifically tailored to match Johnson’s curated selection of clothing – an addition that will provide a more in-depth styling experience for shoppers.
Still staying true to her social worker roots, Feldman said she will be donating a portion of the profits from Marilyn’s Millinery Boutique to the Glamour Project.
“I look at this stuff, and I say, ‘It’s what my grandmother did, my mother did – it’s handmade, one-of-a-kind, and generational to the times of the ‘40s and ‘50s,’” said Feldman. “I could sit here and say my grandmother and my mother would be proud of me doing it this way.”
