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A spring hat - the bonnet with "all the frills upon it" - may be the perfect fashion accessory this season. Millineries, shops selling hats, may sound nostalgic, but in fact, Oakland County offers opportunities for people to choose a fit that is tops for them.

Suzette Mariotti is an artisan milliner and owner of Love's Labours Won, a Royal Oak custom hat business she operates from her home.

She explains how the fashion pendulum is again swinging toward the accessory.

"For centuries people wore hats not only for protection from the weather but also to beautify the wearer," Mariotti says. "There are generations of people out there just starting to rediscover hats."

Customers who come to her the first time typically are looking for a special-occasion hat, something for a wedding or a party, but when they discover they like wearing it, they want more.

Mariotti has designed headwear including a crystal wedding tiara, a man's felt fedora, a coonskin cap and a lady's straw hat with silk trimming. It takes her about a week to build a fully custom hat from the bottom up and to complete the creation to her clients' satisfaction.

Mariotti has basic styles always available for purchase. Her custom hats can range in price from $75 to $250, depending on the production time and materials.

"Spring hats are lighter and airier than ones you'd wear in the fall," she says.

Materials are often sheer and have subtle, varied colors. Polished straw bases are another natural for the season. Mariotti has a particular fancy for incorporating embroidered details and lush textures.

She started making hats to have some that would fit her larger-than-22-inch head, the standard size for women's hats. Mariotti described how she fell in love with millinery beginning in childhood and how she has been creating hats and a market for them ever since. At the start of 2004, she left her engineering job to run her hat business full time.

"The first thing I hear from a lot of people is, 'I don't look good in hats,' " Mariotti explains. "That's usually because they haven't found a good hat."

The right one
To help her customers, she tries to take into account their tastes. Then, she makes suggestions to complement their face shape, hair color and other features. Mariotti says maintaining a good balance of shape, proportion and color in a hat is important for people who wear them to feel comfortable, look attractive and love the way they appear.

Hats can boost confidence, start conversations and convey personality, such as whether people are spirited, sedate or ready to walk in the rain.

"Hats are fun! That's really the bottom line," Mariotti says. "It's the most expressive bit in your wardrobe, and the first one that other humans notice."

Some who wear hats have purely practical reasons in mind.

At the Bobette Shop in Waterford Township, owner Harriet Dunsky explains that half of her hat sales are to people with skin conditions, thinning hair or those receiving chemotherapy treatments.

For a woman going through treatment who is not used to wearing a hat or headcover, it can be stressful, Dunsky says.

"Sometimes it takes a few visits for her to make up her mind," she says. "Good support from a family member or a good friend coming with her is always helpful."

Form-fitting cotton knits, denim, crushed and lightweight fabric hats are easy to pack, Dunsky says. She is pleased to offer a wide selection of styles, ranging in price from $18 to $50.

The type of hats the Bobette Shop offers depends on the season.

"Spring hats usually are lighter colors and prints," Dunksy says. "Pink is a hot color for spring and summer 2004.

"Wearing a hat is enjoyable to outside events on warm, sunny days, traveling on a cruise or just sightseeing and sitting by the pool."

Carol Robinson of Bloomfield Hills is someone who owns about 10 hats, loves to wear them and agrees they make a statement.

"Hats finish my outfit and make me feel glamorous and feminine," she says.

Feeling special
Her favorite hat is a dramatic chapeau, named "Derby Day," made from sinemay and open weave toyo by Gena Conti Millinery in Wyandotte. With its large brim and shallow crown, it is draped in black velvet with dotted tulle and a black silk rose that sits on the side with a matching dotted tulle bow.

Robinson fondly recalls wearing "Derby Day" to the annual Grand Hotel jazz weekend on Mackinac Island. She, however, does not limit her hat wearing to formal settings.

Whether she wears one to work or for a dinner date with her husband, Robinson says, "Every time I wear a hat, I am complimented.

"Not only complimented," she adds, "but stopped and asked where I bought my hat."

In fact, she just purchased a new spring chapeau from Gena Conti Millinery. It is red parisisal straw covered in red-glazed chiffon with handmade trim of matching fabric, horsehair on the edge and red rhea tail feathers.

"In these days of self-serve, fast-serve, no-serve, I find my clientele are extremely pleased to be pampered with a hand-sewn, custom-made hat that fits from our workrooms," Conti says.

She not only has her Wyandotte shop location, but Conti also books millinery showings and speaking engagements, private parties, high teas and fund-raising events in Oakland County and around the state.

"Our custom business has always been very popular, but it has skyrocketed over these last five years," she adds.

Living sculpture
Sculpting material and draping are Conti's favorite elements of design.

"We, ourselves, are sculpture - viewed from all sides," she explains. "When I sculpt a hat, I spin it 'round, as if it were on a potter's wheel, because it must flatter its wearer from all angles."

Cynthia Hencsie of Troy is the owner of Design Network, Inc., the current president of the Michigan Chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers and someone who treats hats like "finishing touches" in a room. They coordinate, highlight and add complexity, in an effort to draw interest.

Estimating she owns about 100 hats, Hencsie describes her favorite as a wide, off-white hat Conti made for her a few years ago with vintage black veiling and a silk flower.

"It enabled me to get a glimpse of how women must have felt in the turn of the century with the extravagant hats and outfits they wore," Hencsie says. "It makes one stand taller, walk more gracefully. Because you feel good, smiles are easy."

Men who wear hats like the attention, too.

William Volz of Bloomfield Township says his favorite memory of wearing a hat was walking in midtown Manhattan, wearing a brown leather jacket and a brown bowler by Conti and "getting compliment after compliment from men who looked like it had been a long time since they had last complimented anyone about anything."

He owns about 20 hats, and the next one he is considering for his spring 2004 collection is another bowler, maybe in a rich loden green.

As someone who has studied with lifelong milliners and traveled throughout Europe designing and creating hats for clients, Conti summed up why now is the season to give these accessories a try.

"We bloom under hats in springtime colors and fabrics," she says. "Spring is a fine time for a new hat!"