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GRACEFUL BUTTERFLY HAT DESIGN INTERVIEW for SKYLINE
I was delighted to have been asked to be interviewed by Skyline about the hat I designed for a young woman attending the Kentucky Derby this year. At first I was a bit nervous about it, but I was calmed by the soft spirit of the lovely woman interviewing me...Felicia Dechter. I want to gracefully thank her for taking the time to write about my artistic work within her beautifully written article...
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A TIP OF THE CAP TO SONIA CACERES
by Felicia Dechter
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"HEART of the 'HOOD"
Sonia Caceres has sold her one-of-a-kind, vintage hats all over the world. There’s the chapeau she created for Walt Disney’s MGM Studios and the dozen she recently designed for the Peninsula Hotel Hong Kong’s Salon de Ning’s Boudoir Room, which will use them as lampshades.
Yet creating those toppers were a cinch compared to what Caceres put together for a North Carolina woman to don Saturday at the Kentucky Derby. “She sent a picture of the shoes she wanted to match a hat to,” explained Caceres, a North Sider who owns the online millinery shop Graceful Butterfly Design. “They were purple snakeskin with a zebra-print band!” So Caceres created the perfect hat for the woman to wear while sipping her mint julep. It’s black, with a big purple silk flower, purple ostrich feathers and a band of zebra-striped ribbon. “It was really challenging,” said Caceres, an alum of LeMoyne Elementary in Lake View. “But she e-mailed me and said it matched perfectly.”
For anyone who knows Caceres, that perfect match is no surprise. Had she had a past life, it would no doubt have been as a beautiful Gibson Girl or Roaring ’20s flapper. Some of you may even remember the boutique Caceres once operating on Armitage Avenue in Lincoln Park, called Sonia Simone. Filled with sweet trinkets, treasures and romance, the store was “a potpourri of vintage opulence.” Caceres closed the boutique in 2002, and about three years ago, with leftover inventory, she started designing hats and created Graceful Butterfly Design. She has now sold more than 500 of the beauties taking “boring and plain” vintage and sprucing them up with all sorts of fun and decorative items, including belt buckles and even wind chimes. Caceres says she’s doing her part to recycle and be green, and each hat is one-of-a-kind. “I take vintage elements and reincarnate them into my hat designs,” said Caceres, who is self-taught and shops estate sales and antique markets here and in faraway lands like Morocco, Paris and Spain. “That’s my little contribution.”
She said the customer usually gives her a color and idea for the brim, “and they actually let me do my own thing.” Caceres never draws anything out. She dips into her drawers filled with flowers and ribbons and all sorts of pretty and whimsical pieces and then, “They start to speak to me and I take it from there.”
On a table in Caceres’ studio sits a box of 64 Crayolas, reminding her of where her artistic abilities began. She said she started coloring at 3, and after winning a xylophone in a coloring contest at 4, she was hooked. Later in life though, in the 1980s, it was mad-hatter Raymond Hudd’s creations and his Lincoln Park millinery shop that profoundly influenced Caceres. “I think he planted the seed,” she said. “It was like eye candy to me, the whole store. It inspired me and I didn’t even realize it.”
Today, you can find Caceres’ designs at GracefulButterfly.com. Be sure to check out the children’s hats too, for little girls, as they’re especially precious. “All my hats are one-of-a-kind,” said Caceres. “I never make anything twice.”
