Maun, Botswana
November 15, 2008
Into the bush on safari, I imagined I had left all thoughts of couture behind. As usual, the enduring lesson about Africa – about life in general – is to expect the unexpected.
On the day Americans were celebrating Obama’s victory (or not), my friend Sandy and I pitched up as guests at Camp Moremi so I could introduce her to the African lodge experience with Desert and Delta Safaris, which repeatedly has afforded me a place I longed for from America: a home in the bush among the animals and a life attuned to nature’s rhythms, not the alarm clock’s. We were scruffy and bedraggled (maybe I should speak for myself) from our two nights of mobile safari camping with my landlords’ company, Karibu Safari, but completely satisfied with our authentic, rugged tent safari in Moremi Game Reserve, even during the crash-bang thunderstorm that shot lightning bolts to the ground nearby, and I mean on X- marks-the-spot nearby. Exciting! That’s how I viewed it. I like to think of it as Nov. 4 election fireworks and, as I mentioned in the previous blog, a blessing bringing rain.
On our first game drive in Camp Moremi, we crawled to the top seats on the game viewer behind a diminutive man wearing a tight tangerine-colored shirt, his hair moussed upward in a style reminiscent of the crested crane I had seen at Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. His partner was bespectacled John, friendly, older, an accountant. The man in the tangerine shirt turned out to be a high priest of fashion: Louis Mariette. His business card from London is black with silver lettering. It features a festive crown one might see at a Mardi Gras ball, if I’d been to one. “Bespoke hat couture/ Bejewelled headpieces and accessories/ (by appointment only),” said his card. See www.louismariette.com for his photo gallery of dragonfly tiaras, his masterpieces that have appeared at Ascot races, Dorchester balls, his 15-million-pound timepiece hat, his list of supermodels who wear his work and the mention of Jerry Hall as one of his clients. Ascot, he told me, is a milliner’s “red-carpet moment.”
Sandy and I immediately liked Louis (pronounced Loo-ee) and John, and they liked us. We did the unthinkable and chatted too much on the game drive, but how could you not chat with a world famous hatmaker who would be right at home on the first version of the fashion make-over show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” although by necessity it would most certainly have to be a highbrow, gilded edition for the uppercrust.
Louis grew up in Africa, in Botswana for a time, Swaziland and Mauritius. His father was a vet, so Louis finds himself at home in the bush or on Rodeo Drive. Not only does Louis have an eye for hats, he can spot game with uncanny laser sight – from an owl hidden away to a monitor lizard tucked into the grass. I was impressed. Africa, particularly its insects, provides inspiration for his hat creations. I wish I could say I shared his enthusiasm for creepy-crawlies that fly, but don't get me started.
I let him in on my family lore, because, I decided, we were connected by artistry. In the 1700s an ancestor of mine from Coventry, England, stowed away on a ship bound for Philadelphia. The man paid off his passage as an apprentice to a milliner and later became a Minuteman in the Revolutionary War, a fact that prompted my mother to join the Daughters of the American Revolution and to occasionally note that I, too, am eligible to become a DAR member. Not ready. Not old enough. So you see, I, too, have the blood of hatmakers coursing through my veins!
Louis hesitated. Do you know whether he designed fashionable women’s hats, military hats or perhaps utilitarian hats for such people as firemen? he asked. Why, I never considered it could be anything other than women’s hats ablaze in colonial fabulousness. Dash it all! I might have had a perfectly pedestrian milliner for an ancestor. My feather in my cap wilted at the notion.
Which inspired an idea. Louis, since you are a world famous milliner, please give me your assessment of the hat I’m wearing. I bought it in Napa Valley a few years back and have worn it religiously in Botswana.
Louis pulled out the cannons.
Your hat is dowdy, he told me. It ages you 5-6 years. It’s clear that you had a relationship that ended and you wear the hat to hide your face. Correct?
Yes, I told him, at least about the relationship part and how I had missed the fellow for several years.
And, he hastened to add, the hat says you bake cakes.
We fell over laughing.
And Sandy’s bendable cowboy hat?
It says young, hip and loving life, he decreed.
Fine, I said. My hat is finished! It is over. Tonight we burn it in a fire ceremony!!!!
And so you have before you an array of photos - if Blogger works -- recording the burning hat ceremony with m.c. Louis Mariette. We decided to let guests around the campfire shout out words they would like written on the hat, signifying things they would prefer to vanish with the smoke. We heard: Palin, Maverick McCain, gun nuts, segregation, Mugabe. Those are the ones I remember. After all, there had been quite a cocktail hour in celebration of Obama preceding the ritual.
The ceremony ended with the ashes of my Napa Valley hat destined for the soil of Africa.
With customary generosity Sandy presented me with her Texas cowboy hat as a gift. She'll buy a replacement when she returns to Austin.
What a lucky evening I had correcting the sartorial faux pas. The fashion gods smiled upon me in the firelight. I could feel it.
A tip of a bespoke cowboy hat to Louis! (P.S. Can someone tell me what bespoke means, other than in the verbal sense?)
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