Bridgette Cook and Her Boldly Beautiful Creations

The Scarlett Rose owner Bridgette Cook sits as she makes a hat in her tent at the Bay Area Renaissance Festival.

Bridgette Cook is the owner of the Scarlett Rose, a traveling hat and accessory shop for which she designs and makes her own extravagant pieces. Cook spends six months out of the year traveling around the country to places like Kansas City, Pennsylvania and Virginia setting up shop in renaissance festivals for seven to thirteen weeks at a time. Cook was kind enough to tell me all about her business and the lengths she has gone to support it.

How did you start making hats?

Started out as an entertainer, then I started vending and that was about 20 years ago. Each thing that ive done i've evolved, I was a service provider and I started with hair wraps. Then I went into creating feather products. Then I moved on to hats. I am a very small person, and I could not find one hat that would fit me, so I started making my own, and everyone loved what I was wearing. I started putting them up for sale and they started moving so that’s pretty much how it started. I always loved costumes when I was a little girl.

What is your favorite part about making hats? What is your least favorite part?

I hate lining hats, it takes forever. I am sort of an OCD person, and linings don’t always want to be perfect, and they take extra time for me. My favorite part is a new design. When a new design comes together it is one of the best feelings. When you have a picture in your head that you’ve dreamed about and you’ve thought about and then you actually put it together and then you actually make that work in real life, that is wonderful thing.

How often do you make new designs?

About every six months. I have a lot of really beautiful, high-end hats and they’re very expensive. They’re expensive because one: it’s my art, I don’t make more than one kind. You might see the same colors but you will never look across a crowded room and see your hat on somebody else’s head if you bought it from me. And that is a feature as well as a point of price for me. However, not everyone can afford to spend $200 on a hat. So, I need to be able to have some designs that if somebody wants to spend $49 or $79 they can walk away with a beautiful hat.

How do you decide the pricing of the hats? Are the custom ones more expensive?

A lot of it is time, my time as an artist. The materials I use are very high-end materials. I’ll have unique materials that I collect, I also have vintage crystal pieces, I go to flea markets and I find unique and sometimes antique pieces that will go on these hats. For one hat I made, just the piece alone cost me

$25. The client wanted a mermaid hat, so I found a gorgeous mermaid carved out of bone and I paid $25 just for that element. Often times when I buy material I’ll get it at a good deal. There are certain things I don’t get good deals on, like crystals, antiques, and feathers. Feather plumes are outrageously expensive. The plumes that I use are the high-end plumes. They are from 28 to 33-inch plumes, which is an Ostridge feather. It’s been called a waterfall feather because of the way it flows. If you look it’s almost like water. It’s not a stiffened feather like a turkey feather. It has movement and it is very luxurious. You pay for luxury. A quarter pound of feathers will cost me $140, which is a lot less thank you think it is. I can’t always afford to buy them by the quarter pound, so when I put two to three feathers on a hat, there’s a reason why the price is what it is. The most expensive hat I have ever made I sold for $445. She was a Kentucky Derby hat, I called her Big Blue. Big blue had a dozen plumes, and that is why she was so expensive.

I have to be able to make some money off of it for my art, I should not be sitting on a table creating my art for less than 25 dollars an hour. Otherwise, I won’t make it. Unlike the job where you walk in and clock in from 8 to 5, and whether you brought in a dollar or not you get paid at the end of the week for your 40 hours. If I don’t sell something or create income with my art I will not get paid, so every hour has to count and has to provide me with that when I’m creating my work.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

I love historical shows and movies. For instance, a hat I made has a direct correlation to The Outlander, which is a show about a woman that goes back in time to the 1600’s in Scotland. In the second season of the show, the woman goes to the French court and she had this beautiful brown, satin dress and this gorgeous brown hat and I went: “You know, I’m going to make that.” And so I did. I get a lot of inspiration from television shows, pictures and sometimes an idea in my head comes of what I think would look good.

What is it like being a business owner today?

You have to be a planner, you have to be able to look ahead and you have to think on your feet. For the last two months, except for last weekend which I had the Treasure Chest Pirate festival, I haven’t worked, so you have to be able to manage your money and pay things in advance. All year long I work on putting money back, taking care of obligations, working on my credit, so that I can make sure that anytime I have downtime I can survive the next show without it being devastating.

Have you ever had anyone copy one your creations?

Absolutely. I learned a really valuable lesson. One that not only gave me peace of mind but it also gave me the ability to overcome that situation. I had a very good friend that came to visit me when I was struggling with someone that was doing this. He told me: “You need to out-create your problem.” People are always going to try to copy you, the only thing you have to do is number one do it better, and second, always be improving. Always be evolving. It will forever be behind you. As long as I keep creating and keep improving I am okay because there’s always going to be someone out there copying but I have the original, they don’t know how I do it. Out-create your problem. That is the best advice I could ever give someone.

Have you ever had an unsatisfied costumer?

Yes. Even when they have been terrible people, I have always given them their money back and done what I could to save my problem. However they do go on a spreadsheet so I know not do business with them again. Sometimes people are really rude in the shows. They are in the minority, but they have little respect when they come in and they consider us less than important. Sometimes they'll say: "Well I'll give you $15 for that."

What’s it like traveling the country for your work and do you get tired of being on the road for so long?

I get tired a lot, I am 53 years old, but no more tired than anybody else does if they work really hard. There’s times when I don’t get much of a day off and I get really exhausted and I just want to go home and go to bed. People have this idea that renaissance people, after the show ends we have these big naked parties and dance around fires. We just want to go home and watch some TV and go to bed! We’re tired, we’ve been working for 12 to 10 hours. And then we have to work during the week, if you make your product you don’t just work on the weekends. Everyone says: “I would love to have your job, you only work on the weekends!” No! I work during the week making what I sell on the weekend. However, it keeps me young. I do a lot of physical activity. I am mistress of my own fate. I run my own company. I am not rich but I’m not broke. There are pay offs for everything you do. You can choose to do something where you make loads of money but your tied down. Do you like being a gypsy? Do you like traveling? Do you like art? You’ll make your choice when you answer those questions. I was a paralegal for ten years. I was getting ulcers, I was miserable. I was the back up call of somebody else and they didn’t care if my time off was interrupted. They would tell me I had to come in on a holiday and go through 31 boxes of evidence, get all the stuff they needed, and when they made that $600,000 judgement they didn’t even give me a $100 bonus. That was it for me. That was my a-ha moment. I told myself: “I’m not happy.” And I left. This year is the first year I have had medical insurance in about ten years. Luckily, I’ve never been sickly but now that there’s some stability I can afford it. There’s beauty in having your freedom. What are you willing to pay for it?

*This interview has been edited for brevity, clarity and style*