Empower With A Flower

‘Pluck’ by name and by nature.
A Goodrum & Merryweather original, created for Wear A Hat Day With Flowers in aid of Brain Tumour Research,
17th June 2022.

A ‘heads up’ for next week, which is full to bursting with millinery since Royal Ascot (14-18th June 2022) and Wear A Hat Day With Flowers (17th June 2022) for the charity Brain Tumour Research are both taking place in quick succession. Goodrum & Merryweather will be involved in both events as some of my hats will be on stylish heads in the Ascot Enclosure on Ladies Day on Thursday whilst Brain Tumour Research will be featuring me, and my Goodrum & Merryweather adventures, across their social media platforms on Friday.

Brain Tumour Research organises three fund- and awareness-raising ‘Wear A Hat’ events nationally across the calendar year: their flagship event in March called ‘Wear A Hat Day’; ‘Wear A Hat Day With Flowers’ during British Flower Week in June; and, ‘Wear A Christmas Hat Day’ at the end of the year. As both a milliner and a brain tumour survivor (having had 12-hour surgery at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, in April 2019), I hold the charity, and its Wear A Hat Days, particularly dear. You may read my Story Of Hope, which has just been published on the Brain Tumour Research website in readiness for Wear A Hat Day With Flowers here.

This year, I have fashioned a custom-made Goodrum & Merryweather flowery hat (pictured) as my own millinery tribute to the charitable brain tumour cause. After some consideration, I titled it Pluck, as in flower but also courage. Appropriate. Yet, is a hat truly able to do justice to all the tremendous people involved in my diagnosis, surgery and convalescence these past three years? All the fundraisers and all the friends? I will leave you to decide. What is increasingly apparent to me is that millinery, along with the establishment of Goodrum & Merryweather, over recent months has been a significant part of my recovery, both mentally and physically. If my brain tumour was unexpected, then my emergence as a milliner has been equally so. My health crisis imposed permanent disability, forced part-time working, disrupted an established career path but also brought welcome opportunities in millinery form, including time and space to practice its art and craft. Millinery has diverted my attention, made my creative juices flow, given me joy, connected me to new networks, introduced me to new people, developed my motor skills and stamina, and supplied focus and purpose. It has been a silver lining. (A silk dupion silver lining in the best couture millinery tradition, naturally).

Brain tumours kill more children and adults under the age of forty than any other cancer. Yet just 1% of the national spend on cancer research has been allocated to this devastating disease. The Brain Tumour Research charity is determined to change this. Its manifesto contains more information about its vision and campaigning. You may donate to Brain Tumour Research here. Purchase Wear A Hat Day merchandise here. Or buy a Brain Tumour Research brooch designed by one of several high profile milliners (Rachel Trevor-Morgan and Edwina Ibbotson among them) here.