The Buzz Bin

A 25-year-old haberdasher sculpts hats by hand using foam models

By Cassie Walker

If you think of hats as a formal accessory, you haven''t met Sara Czosnyka, a 25-year-old haberdasher with a dark sense of humor. Using her industrial design background, the Whitney Young grad sculpts hats by hand using foam models; the final accent is always something anthropological, such as a gold-leafed bone or a tooth. Czosnyka calls her year-old venture Samsara, after the Sanskrit word for reincarnation and rebirth. "I don't think hats have to be 'era pieces.' They can be playful, or mysterious, or sexy-and they push your ensemble in any sort of direction." Contact her for a catalog: info@samsaradesign.com. From $130.

Photograph: Blackbox Studios, Inc.

This article appears in the March 2008 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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