Hats Off To Butte ‘25

It all started when…

Elizabeth Tritthart from Historic Weaving visited the World Musuem of Mining one day and was surprised to find they house a textile collection donated by residents of the city of Butte. She discovered Butte has a long tradition of fashionable hats to celebrate every kind of event, parties, birthdays, political campaigns, holidays and personal statements. There are hats from Butte’s pioneer days through the last 50 fifty years.

When Brian Mogren of Rediscoveries Vintage and Eliz met in the IBRC (Imagine Butte Resource Center) over a cup of Oro Fino coffee, a spark ignited, and the history of fashion, textiles, and millinery (hat fashion) became a shared point of interest. They beginning planning thinking about best way to tell the story of the Milliners and Merchants in Butte.

The big vision has developed in a group of cultural learning opportunities and fun workshops around the making and decorating of hats all summer and fall, culminating in the “Hats Off To Butte” Hat Fashion Show to be hosted on November 8th, 2025 at the Foreground Gallery, and a Gallery Exhibit of the Hats and Accessories that will be on display until the end of November in the Phoenix Block Building

Any funds raised from this event will benefit the following projects:

• The World Museum of Mining - Textile Collection

• Imagine Butte Resource Center - Community Print Studio

• The purchase of materials for the Butte community to use to make hats for those in need during the 2025-2026 winter season. (“Hats for the Homeless”)

• Seed money to produce this event again in 2026

Our goal is to re-introduce the public to Butte Montana’s history of hats and millinery work, through storytelling, craftsmanship and art.

How do I get involved?

There are many roles available for this event:

• Volunteer - We need ushers, assistants for models - handling the hats, gallery technicians - painting and setting up the show, and more.

• Hat Creator (artist/milliner) - We are looking for artists to make hats to be shown alongside of hats from Butte’s historic collection.

• Food Vendor - We would like to serve lovely Saturday afternoon tea food, all items would be finger food: cookies, small pastry items, party sandwiches

• Model - We will looking for 10 - 20 models, we do have a need for a few young models.

• Spectator - A fashion show requires an audience to help bring the event to life.

• Sponsor - There are a number of ways that you can be represented in the event, some of our need for sponsorship will be for tools and materials for making of the hats. We are using the IBRC studio space and providing instruction and guidance to all the artists to help them build millinery skills.

  Click on any of the links above to move to a web page that is specific to your area of interest to see the details of the opportunity.

Click here to see a list of planned activities leading up to the fashion show in November.