We can thank a French millinery course for mending her broken heart and kickstarting her collection of bespoke chapeaux
Words by KATHRYN ROMEYN
Teressa Foglia, a burned-out social media consultant with a broken heart, left California in 2016 and decamped to Europe for some healing and hat-making. She returned to Malibu this past spring a changed woman with a burgeoning business. It all stems from the millinery course she took outside Toulouse, France.
“From a soul perspective, I was truly at peace,” Foglia says. “I felt a happiness overcome me; I was getting my sparkle back.” Now, the spritely blonde and her Californian artist beau, creative director Tyler Hays Wild, ride their tandem bicycle up PCH to the eponymous Teressa Foglia boutique in Malibu Village. There they sell and design bespoke hats ($250-$1,800) handblocked and hand-finished with embroidery, burn marks, vintage baubles and fabrics as wide-ranging as Chanel silk scarves and Japanese indigo picked up on global travels and at flea markets (they also have a Brooklyn showroom/studio, which opened in December 2017).
Their head-turning, often funky and always elevated takes on bohemian fedoras and Panama styles have recently attracted the likes of Will Smith, Gerard Butler and Nikki Reed. “It’s an amazing conversation-starter,” says Foglia of her ensemble-polishing hats that imbue wearers with confidence. “I think it makes a person feel good.”
3824 Cross Creek Rd., Malibu, 917-341-1407.
Feature image: TERESSA FOGLIA’s hat shop in Malibu. All photos by Freddie Paull.
This story originally appeared in the October 2019 issue of C Magazine.
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