FASHION WEEK PROFILE // Hats Off to Cha Cha's House of Ill Repute

Dina Pisani -- Courtesy: Cha Cha's House of Ill Repute

When asked what her favorite kind of hat is, milliner Cha Cha--AKA Dina Pisani--doesn't hesitate: "Top." The lady likes a top hat. "But I don't make mine the conventional way. I distress it a little, so people don't feel like it stands out quite so much. Of course, it still stands out."

Pisani's DUMBO-based shop Cha Cha's House of Ill Repute is busily churning out top hats, fedoras, porkpies, and cloches for fashion week and the fall season, but Cha Cha--who also teaches a hat making workshop at 3rd Ward--took a few minutes to chat with us about how she got her start.

"I studied design at Marist, and I had a good design sense, but my construction was poor," she tells us. So she went into retail and turned to millinery as a side project; a way to keep her creativity alive. Pisani studied at FIT and made hats to order before actually setting up shop.

"Sewing is so precise and mathematical, but blocking a hat is really more like sculpture," she explains.

So how does one make a hat?

Pisani orders her material and steams it until it can be molded. She then uses a wooden "block," or mold to shape the hat, then she shapes the brim and adds a ribbon insided called a sweatband. But what sets Cha Cha apart is the details she imparts: the distressing, the trims, the finishes. 

While the Cha Cha moniker stemmed from a nickname her grandmother once gave her, we asked where the whole "House Of Ill Repute" thing came in.

"I was in New Orleans when I was getting ready to open my business, just wandering around the Quarter, and we walked through Storeyville, the district when prostitution was legal. New Orleans is a big inspiration to me, so it just kind of fit." According to Pisani, it also inspired her to one day go into the lingerie business. In the meantime though, we think a distressed porkpie is sexy all on its own.

--Layla Schlack