[ car traffic humming ]
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-My name is Sharon Hagerty
and I'm the owner and operator of Eclipse Hat Shop.
-I googled, we were just having breakfast upstairs,
and I just googled hat stores and I'm like,
"Look, we can walk there."
-It's quite a routine.
Then some people think it's like a little treasure hunt
and we give them stickers.
Here, Western Avenue shops, you're not there yet.
Good morning. [ Chair clatters ]
[ Sign thumps ]
Hi, friends. Come on in. -Looks good.
-Thank you. Hi. Welcome.
Mostly it's customer service here.
-We're not just trying to sell hats.
We're trying to... -Yeah, look in the mirror.
This way. I'm trying to get the angle.
-...find the right hat for you.
-You look great. -Alrighty.
-It's nice to be able to come in and actually see what you like
and be able to try it,
and then have somebody that understands
that all hats aren't made the same,
and that some of us like to wear them differently.
-I love that. I love what you're doing.
-Oh, the shop is fantastic. She's on top of everything.
She knows hats.
Thank you so much. -You look cute.
-You come in, we greet you,
and we measure your head.
So we measure. And you are long oval.
So yes, you are 22 inches.
We talk about hats.
You divide that by pi and then you get your size.
And even if you know you're not going to buy,
I like educating people on hats.
You always brush a hat counterclockwise.
-That's the thing I love about this job
is just that there's no boring days.
The bow always generally goes in the back
and we go from eyebrows and then pull back.
-It's a very close experience that you have here.
I'm not just sitting at this desk like ringing up hats.
And I appreciate it. -Thank you.
-Have a great day. -Thank you.
[ Steam hissing ]
-Sharon has so much like millinery expertise.
Like, she's been doing this for over 40 years.
-Yeah. It's good. Let's see. No, it's still wavy, so hold on.
I loved Home Ec, so I learned how to sew.
It's looking pretty good.
It's got a good brake line. [ Steam hissing ]
I came across a catalog for a community college,
and the word "millinery" was there.
Millinery, there's a hat making class
at San Francisco Community College.
I blocked my very first hat, and then that was it.
I got to study in New York City at FIT.
In my hat-blocking class,
I met this girl, Sherry Vigdor,
and she invited me to join her at Fiorucci
in Manhattan on 59th Street.
So I had a little booth. So I had a table there.
And then Andy Warhol used to come in
and he asked for my hat for this photo shoot here.
So he picked these hats,
and these are the first hats I ever made.
And then I started working in
the theater industry for Broadway.
So going back and forth from New York to San Francisco,
I was working in San Francisco.
My friend Francesca and I came to Seattle.
We came to the market,
and I found Herman in his original location
at 1517 First Avenue.
So back there is where Eclipse Hat Shop began in 1949,
and I still have the same sign on my shop downstairs.
Herman Hellman,
who was a master hat renovator,
and Herman was my mentor for men's hat work.
Prior to that, I was a milliner,
and milliner and millinery
is the making of women's hats.
Hatter is someone who makes men's hats.
A haberdashery is someone
who sells hats and dry goods.
Herman taught me a lot about hats --
cleaning, and hat restoration.
I had purchased the business from him in 1996, '96-'97,
then also acquired all of his vintage tools with the business.
This is called a foot tolliker.
So this is a conformateur.
This is a tool from, like, the 1850s into the '80s
that measures all the variations
in the circumference of your cranium.
[ Conformateur clicking ]
We lift it up.
Oh, look at my cute little peanut head.
So when we trim that,
and then you set it inside the crown of the hat
to custom size it.
6 and 7/8ths.
I closed the store in 1999,
just two weeks before I had my daughter, Grace.
Once I closed the Eclipse Hatch Shop,
it was just in my house, in my kitchen.
Or I'd have to do these little hatch shows or collections.
I just really wanted a brick and mortar store.
So then the pandemic hit.
And then I had this wonderful coach, Laura,
who we'd talk on the phone and we'd talk about
how Sharon's going to start her hat shop again.
And then so I just went on the Pike Place Market website,
and this shop was the only one that was open.
I applied for it.
Reopened Eclipse April of 2021.
The market is a community
that really holds on to small businesses.
So I started, you know, very small.
I only had 40 hats
and then just built the business up.
Yeah, so then you can also do
kind of Sinatra style with the down.
We also have respect from the brands.
-Sharon put in a lot of work
and a lot of time to make these connections.
-The Borsalinos, the Stetsons.
So this is the Stetson Stratoliner,
little Boeing 307 airplane on it.
Mayser, Christie's of London,
they have been making hats since 1773.
We have fine Panamas, all hand-woven in Ecuador
and finished with different brim sizes.
This is a top hat,
and it's called an opera hat because...
[ Imitates deflating ] [ Hat deflates ]
...when you go to the opera,
you can slip it under your seat.
And there you go. [ Hat pops ]
I carry Laulhère berets.
1840 is when they first started making berets.
They invented it for the French military.
Two thumbs.
Put it on your forehead first
and then put it down the back, there.
Flat caps, pub caps, 8-panel caps.
Then there's City Sport. And I picked the fabrics.
And then they build them for me in Belgium.
Look at it.
I love this.
I really love hats.
And I just think it's a passion
mostly that now I can support myself.
-It scallops really nicely.
So if you wanted to wear like all the way back.
-I have my wonderful assistant Diego
working part time.
-Hats are just a beautiful way to express.
-Two hands.
Smooth it like that.
-Whoever comes in, that's our goal...
-Look at that hat. -...Is to help them out.
-That's your color. -Oh!
-Isn't it beautiful?
-I love this hat.
-They make me happy.
I've just literally loved them all the time.
-It's exactly what I wanted.
Sold! [ Laughs ]
-Alright. Thank you.
-Any time of year,
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