Every couple of years since the Duchess of Windsor laid down her Lilly Dache, someone bemoans the death of the hat, or else heralds its return. But the hat never died out, it just moved upstairs with the rest of the couture, nurtured by the likes of Philip Treacy.

What Sheri Wildhagen and husband David Greig are doing at their shop Wildhagen in Toronto's Distillery District -- and at their new second location at 575 Queen West (upstairs from Mokuba) -- is bringing it back to the street.

With designs inspired by 1930s Hollywood as much as by the glamour of Idlewild-era flight attendants, Wildhagen hats (wildhagenwear.com) are cool enough to draw looks, beautiful enough to turn those looks into stares, and practical enough to keep your head warm in winter and cool in summer.

Some are space-age streamlined, others wacky (visors like Saturnian rings, woollen rain hats like the old dime-store plastic style), others retro with tiny flipped brims.
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And with a top price of about $160, they're meant to move well beyond the metallic blond coifs of Rosedale and the British Properties.

This winter's collection is all about woven wool -- recycled, even -- that looks like felt but feels a lot softer. The couple work from flat designs, so no gilded cages or metre-high spirals here.

Soon after they met at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Greig persuaded Wildhagen to drop out and make her way in the fashion world. A clerical job at Calvin Klein in New York was a start; she was soon working in window displays for CK's Madison Avenue store, while Greig did the same at Barney's. Back in Toronto on the last day of the past century, the couple started thinking about hats.

Within a year, they sent a package to Barney's. They heard back within a week, and have been supplying the iconic New York store with about 100 hats each fall ever since.

"Three years ago, you'd walk down Queen Street and there was a total absence of interesting hats," Greig says. "But the hat culture is becoming more sophisticated now, and that's definitely in our favour."

Special to The Globe and Mail