Calgary-based Carolyn Devins: Milliner to the stars

by Maxine Fischbein

(AJNews) – Hats off to Calgary-based milliner to the stars Carolyn Devins!

A talented member of the Calgary Jewish community who hails originally from Edmonton, Devins has, over the past four decades, created costumes, hats and accessories for stage and screen. She was recently the recipient of a prize for Most Innovative Hat at the bi-annual Millinery MeetUp (MMU), a six-day series of workshops and classes organized by the American Institute of Millinery Education and held at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

There, professional milliners and serious hobbyists, had the opportunity to learn both contemporary and historic millinery methods, says Devins, who attended thanks to a grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Held September 21-26, the MMU included a competition sponsored by suppliers who ran a trade show there. The Sci-Fi contest theme was just the kind of creative project on which Devins thrives, because it appealed to her abundant creativity and unquenchable desire to learn new skills.

All MMU participants were encouraged to participate in the contest by submitting a “wearable hat using at least one non-traditional material related to [science fiction].”

Thus was born Devins’ Portable Biosphere Hat, an imagined solution to an all-too-real problem Albertans face during wildfire season: how to carry your own source of fresh air when bombarded for days on end by smoke and ash.

Six MMU instructors—hailing from the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain and Australia—were the judges who put the proverbial feather in Devins’ cap with the prize for Most Innovative Hat.

In addition to bragging rights, Devins scored MMU swag and a portable industrial steamer she plans to put to good use on movie sets.

“Although this is a fictional prototype, the science might be needed in a possible dystopian future, and what is prettier than a garden,” said Devins in the statement accompanying her submission.

Of course, one must be able to see the garden, an effect Devins enabled by “using custom vacuformed recycled plastics…trimmed with dried plant material and vintage millinery flowers.”

Devins loved the challenges of the project, which ranged from technical issues to contacting the Department of Agriculture to make sure she would be permitted to take the contents of the hat across the border. As a precaution, she did not incorporate the garden into the hat until she arrived in Gatlinburg.

In order to create her one-of-a-kind hat, Devins took a vacuum-forming course at Fuse33 Makerspace, located in SE Calgary, so that she could mold clear plastic to the exact shape necessary to form the head-hugging base of the hat.

Another notable feature of her Portable Biosphere is “the nasal cannula…incorporated into the design to get the oxygen generated by the garden to the wearer’s lungs.”

The glow of lights encased in the trim of Devins’ remarkable hat (a feature hinting at the chapeau’s ability “to generate oxygen even while indoors”) added even more warmth to her cozy living room as she shared recollections of her 40-plus years as a costume maker and milliner.

Across a hallway is the workshop where it all happens. Devins calls it “the pit.”  The atelier is multi-coloured and multi-textured floor-to-ceiling organized chaos.

There are beads, feathers, ribbons and vintage straw. Countless hat blocks line high shelves, ascending into the ceiling. Here and there are attention-grabbing projects in various stages of completion, including a hat commissioned by an Etsy customer: a vintage felt hat reborn as a cross between a fedora and a top hat.

A riot of hat blocks and hats have escaped to the living room where one can imagine them bursting into song and dance à la Disney. They do, of course, have stories to tell! One is a vintage cowboy hat Devins scored at a thrift shop. Its former owner served on the Calgary Stampede Board of Directors. Devins knows this because his name was in the hat and, always curious, she googled it.

Another thrift shop find, a luscious peacock blue hat, features Dior netting Devins lovingly caresses.

“Now it is unobtaineum,” she quips, since Dior netting is no longer produced.

I somewhat shamefacedly admit that I am not a hat wearer only to elicit a reassuring yet counterintuitive fun fact: neither is Devins!

Notwithstanding that she has just snagged a prize for a futuristic hat design, Devins—who launched her own business, Easel Incorporated, in 1997—specializes in historical hat making with a major focus on the 19^th century.

You have likely seen her work, though you may not know it. Her hats have graced the heads of Demi Moore, Virginia Madsen, Jann Arden, and Abbie Cornish. Notable TV series and films for which she has stitched bonnets and hats include Little House on the Prairie, Passchendaele, Fargo, The Twilight Zone, and The Gilded Age.

Her favourite set, so far, was North of 60 because of its location in Bragg Creek.

In addition to gorgeous terrain, says Devins, “all the performers were really beautiful people.”

“Fargo was crazy,” recalls Devins. “All of the stories you hear about artistic people who go off on a tangent… that was Fargo. Every 10 minutes they would come up with a new great idea and all the departments would be scrambling trying to make it a reality.”

Another notable experience for Devins was working on the set for Atom Egoyan’s 2002 Ararat, a historical drama about the Armenian Genocide, which earned Genie Awards for Best Film and Best Director.

“A lot of the extras were Armenian and…I was really touched by their commitment to getting the story out,” said Devins. “There were people my age lying in a snow bank for four hours without complaining because it was so important to them.”

Devins is always on the lookout for historical publications including newspapers and books, combing them for drawings and photos of vintage hats that inspire her period-perfect head coverings, most of which are handstitched. To illustrate the point, she pulls out a Harper’s Weekly from 1857, the kind of treasure she watches for on EBay.

While laser-focused on producing authentic-looking chapeaux, Devins incorporates, as appropriate, modern materials and techniques that can withstand theatrical wear and tear.

One of her most extensive millinery projects to date was for the TV series Hell on Wheels, an American Western filmed in Calgary and nearby locations including Kananaskis.

How many hats for that epic? “I stopped counting at 300,” chuckles Devins, adding that her favourite project is “the next one.”

A member of IATSE 212, the trade union representing costume makers and milliners working for stage and screen, Devins is the only local hat maker who specializes in theatrical millinery and believes there is only one other in all of Western Canada.

An interesting part of her job involves aging and distressing the hats she has made according to the requirements of the script. She loves the creativity of the task, notwithstanding the fact that it often involves a lot of dirty work. A particular challenge is the temporary aging and distressing of pieces that have been rented and must be returned to their original condition.

Devins says that if she does her job properly, viewers’ eyes focus upon the faces of actors and are not distracted by the hats they are wearing. She therefore typically chooses muted colours and most often resists the urge to go wild, though she is happy to do so if a particular script or customer requires it.

 Carolyn Devins pivoted to hat making in 2000, but her calling has deep family roots. Her maternal grandmother Erna Becker—a German Jew—worked as a milliner between World War I and World II. When antisemitism closed doors for Becker, she established her own shop, but it was a short-lived experience. As the Nazi noose tightened around the necks of European Jews, Schocken—the Jewish-owned chain of department stores for which Becker’s husband Richard managed a deli department—helped Jewish employees flee to safer shores.

The Beckers and their young daughter Miriam—Carolyn Devins’ mother—were thus able to immigrate to Argentina prior to WWII. Tragically, many family members remaining behind perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Worried about what the future held under President Juan Perón’s increasingly repressive regime, the Beckers eventually reunited with family in Canada, living in Winnipeg before settling in Edmonton in the early 1960s. Their daughter Miriam and her husband Allan had preceded them, and the family welcomed Carolyn, the first of three girls.

Devins reminisces about the hours she spent with her Oma making clothes and hats for her dolls, a time when it first dawned on her that one could imagine things and then set about creating them.

Deeply influenced by both her grandparents, Devins recalls another aha moment around the age of 13, when they took her to a play at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre.

“I was just mesmerized. There was a whole world on that stage. People made those costumes, and I wanted to do that too,” Devins recalled.

While in high school Devins experienced a third epiphany.

“I found out costume making was an actual job, and I said that’s the job I’m going to do.”

Carolyn’s greatest cheerleader is her mother Miriam, herself a skilled sewer. Carolyn’s late father Allan—who took up woodworking after his retirement—got into the act by making and repairing hat blocks for Carolyn.

While studying at the University of Alberta—where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Home Economics during the early 1980s—Devins apprenticed in the Drama Department’s costume shop. Since then, she has sewn up a storm for a long list of Alberta’s most cherished arts organizations including the Alberta Ballet, Theatre Calgary and the Banff Centre for the Arts.

While she mainly makes hats for the stage and screen, Devins’ creations can also be purchased by hat lovers from her two Etsy shops, Easel Victorian Hats and Easel Retro Hats.

Devins is a long-time congregant at Temple B’nai Tikvah and became an active member of Rimon, a Jewish fibre arts guild established in Calgary in 2007.

“It was my entrée to the community,” said Devins who found joy “…making friends with people at a deep level over something that we all really care about.”

Devins took on various leadership roles in Rimon, eventually serving as a vice president.

“It took me a long time, as an introvert, to get into the Jewish community in Calgary in a way that made me feel at home and comfortable and purposeful,” Devins recalled.

In one notable project, Devins teamed up with Nadine Waldman, Deb Finkleman, Susan Podlog and Polina Ersh, to make a beautiful set of High Holidays Torah covers for Temple.

Devins also created a cover for a new Torah scroll acquired by Temple a few years back and shares her time and talent when repairs are needed. She also made the Torah cover for the Little Synagogue at Heritage Park.

“Joining Rimon led to me joining the Chevra Kadisha and forming even stronger connections with people outside of my Synagogue community,” said Devins, one of a circle of volunteers who regularly hand stitch tachrichim (shrouds) for the Jewish burial society.

She wants other potential volunteers to know that they don’t need her specialized skills to perform that mitzvah.

“It is very easy sewing and anyone who is keen can learn how,” Devins told AJNews.

Toward the end of a fascinating chat, Carolyn Devins shows me an exquisite little hamentasch fascinator that she made in order to teach the basics of hat making via Zoom for members of Rimon and the Toronto chapter of the Pomegranate guild during the height of COVID.

Chanukah is coming, and the fascinator is for sale—the only hamentasch that will keep until Purim!

Any budding milliners out there?  “Work on your hand sewing skills,” advises Devins, who has taught costume and/or hat making at the University of Alberta, Mount Royal University, Olds College and Costume Alchemy.

“When you’re working on a hat, you don’t want it to look like you made it. Ideally, it should look like it was born.”

After 25 years devoted mainly to hat making, Devins says she has chosen to slow down a bit, but she shows no signs of stopping.

“I have to use all this stuff up,” she laughs, pointing to the shelves and bins holding raw materials waiting to be transformed by her skilled hands.

Biz hundert un tsvantsik! She will need at least that long to exhaust the supply.

Devins says she does not get overly attached to her creations, adding, “I am happy to let them go and live their happiest life.”

To feast your eyes on Carolyn’s millinery magic, go to www.easelincorporated.com.

Maxine Fischbein is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter