Historically, milliners, typically women shopkeepers, produced or imported an inventory of garments for men, women, and children and sold these garments in their millinery shop. Many milliners worked as both milliner and fashion designer, such as Rose Bertin, Jeanne Lanvin, and Coco Chanel.

The millinery industry benefited from industrialization during the nineteenth century. In 1889 in London and Paris, over 8,000 women were employed in millinery, and in 1900 in New York, some 83,000 people, mostly women, were employed in millinery. Though the improvements in technology provided benefits to milliners and the whole industry, essential skills, craftsmanship, and creativity are still required. Since the mass-manufacturing of hats began, the term milliner is usually used to describe a person who applies traditional hand-craftsmanship to design, make, sell or trim hats primarily for a mostly female clientele.

The term milliner, originally from "Milener", originally meant someone from Milan, in northern Italy, in the early 16th century. It referred to Milanese merchants who sold fancy bonnets, gloves, jewellery and cutlery. In the 16th to 18th centuries, the meaning of milliner gradually changed from a foreign merchant to a dealer in small articles relating to dress. Although the term originally applied to men, milliner came to mean a woman who makes and sells bonnets and other headgear for women since 1713.

The Knox Hat Company was founded in 1838 by Charles Knox…

Knox Hatters expanded slowly at first from a modest shop at 110 Fulton Street to larger premises on Broadway, Nassau Street and eventually his corporate headquarters and shop on Fifth Avenue. The shop was described as “the most elegant establishment of its kind in the country“.

The Knox Hat Company prospered by selling beaver hats to antebellum New Yorkers. Charle’s son, Edward Knox, a Civil War Hero who fought at Gettysburg and was feted by Congress and the Grand Army of the Republic as “the most popular and handsomest officer of the encampment,” took things over upon his recovery from war wounds and turned the company around.

By the middle of the century, Knox Hats were sold all over America and manufactured in Knox’s Brooklyn factory – the largest hat factory in the world. This was the golden age of the top hat and Knox could name many famous Americans as his customers. 23 US Presidents wore Knox hats including Abraham Lincoln’s famous ‘Stovepipe’ hat. Lincoln famously kept important papers in his ‘Knox Stovepipe’.

Knox built their reputation on the quality of their hats and genius for promoting the business which spent huge sums in the newspapers. The financial accounts of 1928 show that Knox Hat Co., Inc operated 62 retail stores and distributed through 2,500 agencies across America. Net sales in 1928 were over $8 Million. The Knox brand lasted until the great depression when in 1932 the three largest Hatters; Cavanagh, Dunlap and Knox merged to become the Hat Corporation of America (known as Hat-Co).

ILLUSTRATOR/ARTIST: Mary MacKinnon (or McKinnon) DeVries Johnson
 
Portraitist and illustrator Mary MacKinnon (a.k.a. McKinnon) grew up in Greenwich Village, New York and studied at the Art Students League*. In 1922, while staying with her family in Woodstock, New York, League teacher George Bellows painted her portrait at least twice, and she posed for Eugene Speicher as well. She illustrated Harper’s Bazaar* and other periodicals and exhibited at New York’s Ferargil Galleries.*

MacKinnon came to Palm Beach, Florida in 1925 and later maintained a studio at Major Alley on Peruvian Avenue. During the summers she painted portraits of society members in Newport, Rhode Island, among other posh locales.