A look inspired by Lady Mary’s words and the child in her portrait

Red Straw, Black Ribbon: Why I Chose These Colors

The Bergère hat has long been seen as a symbol of soft femininity with its light straw, pastel ribbons, delicate flowers perched effortlessly on powdered curls. But history reveals a far more complicated story hiding beneath these gentle details.

Look closely at aristocratic portraits, and you’ll see more than just fashion. In Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s portrait, a young Black child stands beside her, dressed not as a guest but as a status symbol. Throughout 18th-century Europe, children especially children of color were used as human props to showcase wealth, power, and social superiority. This was not fashion it was a display of dominance dressed up as elegance.

That is why, when designing my own bergère hat, I rejected the predictable pastels. I chose black and red two colors that carried entirely different meanings in the 18th century.

Black symbolized mourning, dignity, and mystery. My black ribbon is a memorial for the silenced, the exploited, the children treated as ornaments in a world obsessed with hierarchy.

Red symbolized power, passion, and rebellion. Red was seen as scandalous…too loud, too sexual, too political. I embrace it as a declaration. Red tells the world I am aware of history’s injustices and I will not shrink from them.

I also wear red and black in a personal way because if I had lived in the 18th century, I too could have been that child in the portrait. As a woman of African descent, these colors carry a deeper meaning for me. I wear them not just to critique the past but to reclaim space within it. To honor those erased from history, and to remind the world that we are not background figures but central to the narrative.

By wearing red and black, I reclaim the bergère hat as a tool of awareness and strength not as a costume to escape reality, but as a statement to confront it. This hat does not pretend; it challenges.

Soon, these Red Straw, Black ribbon Bergere hats will be available for pre-order. For those who believe fashion can be a statement, a memorial, and a protest— this is for you.

Because fashion can hold memory. It can carry resistance. And it can spark change.

Fashion is not just decoration…it’s declaration.