Forms in wood and forms in esparto. Two schools of life, two schools of thought. Of course, there are also aluminum hat lasts for industrially produced hats, but in the craft sphere it is between wood and esparto forms. The former, the wooden ones, are made by carpenters for hatters; the latter, on the other hand, are the realm of milliners who use sheets of wide-weave straw (esparto to be exact), covered with dressed gauze that, when moistened, is shaped until the desired shape is obtained. Making a form in esparto is challenging work even for an experienced milliner and requires two full days of work. It starts with a drawing. One moistens the esparteria and, leaning on a head-the so-called poupée-with the help of underwires, scissors and cast-iron irons, the desired shape is created. But in the atelier of Gallia e Peter at some point the wooden form makes its debut. It happens, for example, for the famous hat made for Dior's Parisian catwalks in October 1985, which conquers the press and, within a very short time, becomes an indisputable trend. That same wooden shape will be the basis of another precious and beloved hat: the one made for Armani's 2005/2006 fall/winter collection. A black and white riot as in the best tradition of the designer. It didn't end there, though. Wood even becomes a material of use,as in the famous hat-sculpture with a futurist soul, Elastico. To make it, also in 1986, Laura Marelli threw her heart over the obstacle and was inspired by Joseph Stella's painting The Brooklyn Bridge (1939). She chooses wooden rods stretched outward, tracing an elegant skyline. He crosses the boundary of forms and reinvents a new idea of a hat that projects itself, stubborn, stubborn, extroverted, toward a new concept of the future. At this point, no material or form holds sway. Imagination, in the fabulous 1980s, reaches out to completely new and unexplored horizons (and skylines). And the ancient "form" becomes, finally in everyone's eyes, real art.
