Building a Life, One Hat at a Time

Ten years later, I am still standing in the doorway of my little home full of hats.

Behida Dolić Millinery is Turning 10!

I’m thrilled to invite you to celebrate my first decade in Hudson, NY!

Ten years ago, I drove across the country with everything I owned—a dozen hand-sculpted hats, hat trims, feathers, and one-hundred-year-old wooden molds. At the time, the only plan I had for my life was to some day own a hat shop. How that would happen, I did not know.

The morning before my journey from San Francisco to New York, I lay in bed and looked over at a drawing on my wall, its dusty scotch tape corners peeling at the edges.

The drawing was a little hat shop full of colorful hats, a brass bell hanging on the door, a light blue bicycle with a basket full of apples, and an “OPEN” flag rippling in the wind. I imagined myself looking out on the street from the doorway of that hat shop. I had been gazing at the drawing and imagining the very same thing every morning for seven years.

I yearned for a home, a soul-enriching place where I would be able to create and be completely myself. San Francisco was too expensive and I was too poor. I knew that I had to take a leap of faith, throw myself into the unknown, and trust that my only failure would be never trying at all.

I got up and gently peeled my drawing off the wall, pressed it between the pages of Talking Through My Hats, a 1946 memoir by hat maker Lilly Daché, the only other person I’ve ever known of who, like me, was determined to build her own life one hat at a time.

Now, it’s 10 years since I arrived in a little, historic, upstate New York river town. Ten years since I encountered an antiques dealer on the street who offered me a room within her own shop facing the main street. Ten years since an older gentleman walked into my shop and gifted me millinery tools in memory of his hat-maker wife, who had passed away from breast cancer. Ten years of hills and valleys full of love, loss, new friendships, and endless obstacles overcome.

I believe that sometimes we must write our story first, long before we get to live it. Through all the years, my purpose has always been: Do whatever it takes to make a life for yourself in which you can be creative every single day. Once that deep yearning inside of you is fulfilled, it will always make your heart well up and overflow with the deepest of contentment. 

Ten years later, I am still standing in the doorway of my little home full of hats. Yes, it’s been challenging, but I can proudly say I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

Thank you for all the years of love and support, and for helping me build my dream house full of hats.

I hope to see you all at my party on November 13, 2021. We’ll be serenaded by the incredible, San Francisco-based Gaucho Gypsy Jazz Band. Please join me in celebration of this beautiful life and the journey of making dreams come true.

So much love to you all,

Behida

P.S. If you don’t follow me on Instagram and it’s been a while since you’ve visited my shop, you might not know that I’ve expanded my business into women’s apparel! I now design and sell dresses, tops, pants, skirts, jumpsuits…And my latest initiative: a line of sweaters hand-knit in Bosnia.