Raymond Hudd liked to tell a story that the first time he ever made hats they were for his mules, Jack and Fanny. Apparently, they never left the barn without them on. "Raymond did his own thing," said Ivan Huddlestun about his older brother. "He loved art and he loved nature. I'd be hard pressed to come up with a material that wasn't in one of his hats."
Hudd spent his early years on a small farm near Custer, Mich. While his brothers and his father grew potatoes and tended to the orchard, Hudd was busy in a large flower garden that he and his mother had planted. "He never seemed cut out for farm life," said Huddlestun.
Hudd left the fields of his boyhood farm for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago ( SAIC ) in 1948. "He was just enthralled with creating one of a kind pieces," said Mary Robak, a friend and Chicago millinery historian. "Chicago became a huge hat city in large part because of Bertha Honore Palmer. She loved bringing milliners to Chicago." Hudd lived in a city where Benjamin Greenfield was the go-to milliner for the majority of well-appointed ladies. "The shop was called Bes Ben after he and his sister Bessie. Raymond just idolized that shop and his work," added Robak.
Hudd opened his own shop in 1950 and ended up at a small street front at 40 Oak St. "I just remember going shopping downtown with my mother and sister," said Nancy Remick, a long time Hudd friend. "They would each wear a Hudd Hat into the shop and then leave wearing a new hat for the year while holding the old hats in Hudd Hatboxes. I'm sure he just loved that." Hudd's creations were one of a kind and all marked on the inside with a number and a small fabric violet he fashioned himself.
"Well, don't you know the significance of the violet?" asked Remick. "The violet was inspired by his mother, who he was very close with. Every year in the middle of spring Raymond and the others longed to go barefoot around their land. So his mother said, 'Okay. The first of you who comes back with the first bouquet of violets for me can go barefoot." Hudd used a soft, handmade violet as his signature label, both as an homage to his mother and to the sheer joy he felt as a young boy going barefoot through flowers.
Hudd's joy for his craft was obvious to even those who did not know him. At each shop he owned he would change his window displays monthly. Sometimes reflecting the season and sometimes reflecting a current event. "He'd put everything in those windows. He had a fascination with space and space travel as did a great many people back then," said Robak. "When his last shop on Clark was closing, people stopped to express how upset they were. Not so much at the loss of hats since most people weren't wearing them, but on the loss of the elegant and funny windows they got to pass every day," said Eia Radosavljevic, a millinery instructor at SAIC.
It was not just inanimate paper and fabric Hudd placed in his windows. Legendary comedian Phyllis Diller, a longtime friend and wearer of Hudd Hats frequently tried on hats while in the window of the shop itself to attract passersby and, of course, to be herself. "She met Raymond since his shop was near Mr. Kelley's Nightclub. She has over five hundred of his hats," said Robak. Diller was not the only celebrity to wear a Hudd creation; Joan Crawford was a frequent customer, as was Ann Landers. "I remember he also did a series of hats to be worn at the Chicago premiere of the movie 'The Birds'," said Huddelstun.
Certainly, Hudd loved celebrity but most friends described him as exceedingly modest. Hudd was also well known for his sense of humor. "Raymond was very honest with his feelings. Once when we were out he saw a woman in a hat and said to her, 'I love your hat! But you're wearing it ALL wrong,'" said Remick. He proceeded, much to the surprise and chagrin of the poor woman, to fix her hat. "He was happiest when he was creating joy for other people. It was never about the money," said Remick.
In 2001, The Chicago History Museum featured a collection of Hudd's creations. The curator of the collection, Timothy Long, named Hudd the "Milliner of the Millennium." Shortly after that, due to increasing health problems, Hudd closed his landmark Clark Street store and moved to an assisted living facility in Michigan. That did not stop him from creating. "Oh we had a vintage hat show in Muskegon and Raymond just loved that," said Robak. He even worked on several hats for some of the residents. "Ivan ( Huddleston ) was sent out to the Hobby Lobby on a number of trips." "I just couldn't seem to get the right color for him!" added Huddelstun.
Aside from the more than 50,000 hats that he created during his lifetime, Hudd's legacy also includes the Raymond Hudd Millinery Award. Founded by Radosavljevic, this was a way to award three of the school's best and brightest millinery designers and to pay tribute to one of Chicago's legendary hatmakers. "We chose artists rather than milliners to judge the competition. Raymond was an artist so we felt that fitting," said Radosavljevic.
Memorial services for Raymond Hudd will be held Saturday, Aug. 27, at 1 p.m. at the King Home Huss Gallery in Evanston. For more information, contact Mary Robak at maryrobak@comcast.net .
