Secrets, secrets don’t make friends…but maybe in the case of Rumours Hat Shoppe, they will. Beginning this Friday, April 15 in downtown Champaign, Sally Mundy, the owner Rumours Hat Shoppe, will make sure that anyone and everyone in Champaign-Urbana will have a hat under which to hide their all secrets (and their bad hair days).
Rumours Hat Shoppe, with a name inspired by the notion of telling someone to keep their rumours and secrets under their hat, will not have been the first vendor of its kind in Champaign-Urbana. Mundy is excited about the prospect and opportunity to fill the shoes left behind by Dan’s Hat Shop, which closed its doors in 2002. And fill those shoes she will! Prior to my conversation with Mundy my hat knowledge was fairly limited. However, thanks to her patience and guidance, I have begun my hat education, and am delighted to share that journey with you, fine readers.
How many types of hats exist in the world? A lot. And it seems as if Mundy plans on filling her store with the whole lot of them. “We’ll have fashion hats in wool, felt, cotton, and straw, including fedoras, bowlers, pork pies, panamas, floppy hats, cloches, and flatcaps. We’ll also have streetwear and skatewear hats, like snapbacks, five panels, buckets, and trucker caps. In fall and winter, I will also carry a large selection of knit hats and other cold-weather styles,” Mundy enthusiastically told me as I wondered whether or not I would be tested at the end of our conversation. To make hats even more confusing, Mundy plans on changing and updating the inventory in Rumours Hat Hoppe often, ensuring that people can visit the shop and see new items all the time (and never find out what a pork pie is).
My lesson in hats continued as Mundy quoted Philip Treacy to me, “How a hat makes you feel is what a hat is all about.” Treacy is an Irish born milliner whose work has recently gone beyond gracing the heads of the British family to being displayed at the Met in New York and London V&A. It makes sense that Mundy’s store would be ever changing because according to Mundy, and as evidenced by Treacy’s work, “Hats can be completely transformative to an overall look or merely serve as a functional accessory. Or both!”
Not only is variety important, but quality is as well. “Many of the styles we carry are meant to fit perfectly,” Mundy informed me. For those of you with an oddly shaped noggin, never fear, the patrons of Rumours Hat Shoppe can be sized for an exact fit if they so choose. In addition, within the first year of opening Mundy hopes to offer hat cleaning and blocking services.
And if you’re still thinking, “Really? Only hats?” The answer is yes. Only hats. Mundy is determined that Rumours be the best hat shop that it can possibly be. The woman is really passionate about hats. She has been ever since she was five years old and the craze began with a souvenir captain’s hat from Disney World. She’s been wearing hats ever since, and no one was surprised when she told them she’d be selling hats for a living. Don’t even get her started on the hat that Beyoncé wears standing on a porch in her “Formation” music video. But if you would like to hear about Mundy’s passion for that particular hat or other celebrities with good hat sense (read: Pharrell), head over to Chester St. in Downtown Champaign this Friday for the opening of Rumours Hat Shop from 7-9 p.m. The opening of Rumours Hat Shoppe is one secret you don’t need to keep under your hat.