Raymond Hudd has no customers in his north-side hat shop, and he’s not expecting a rush anytime soon. “No one dresses up anymore,” he says, shrugging. “It’s not like it used to be.”
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“You look beautiful,” Hudd gushes at a young brunette who’s decked out in a business outfit. She sets a sleek, fuchsia Hudd original on her head. Doffing this creation for another, she parades in front of the shop’s full-length mirror. “Oh, I love them,” she says. “But I have no place to wear them.”
“But you can wear them anywhere,” he pleads, then launches into his lecture on how hippies destroyed hat couture.
Six years later, in 1950, he had scraped together enough money to open his own high-style milliner’s shop at Clark and Division.
“Oh, it’s my husband’s hat,” she says abruptly.
He spends a lot of time digging up objects like kitchen utensils to mold into these fantastical helmets, which have gained him the monikers the Mahatma of Hats and the Mad Hatter of the Midwest. He has at least a couple dozen, including a pillbox inspired by the mid-80s Tylenol scare that has two mice tumbling over a medicine bottle and tiny red and white capsules caught in a lacy veil; an Ollie North top hat with a dangling collage of shredded paper and dollar bills; and a derby with a pig and the Spam logo mounted on it. All are meant to be displayed rather than worn. One local gallery actually gave them a brief exhibit. Rarely, he says, are they sold.
