Your 2023 Mad Hatter’s Tea Recap: Rain Clouds, a Garden Party, and ‘God Save the Queen’

Regardless of the threats of April showers, the hats on the Dallas Arboretum had been all flowers in the course of the 35^th annual Mad Hatter’s Tea final Thursday. 

“Thanks for attending in the present day regardless of threatening climate,” Girls’s Council president Sarah Jo Hardin instructed the 700 or so company who braved the stormy forecast April 20. “It seems to be like we had a variety of clouds, however a variety of silver linings that introduced us luck.”

The Girls’s Council started placing on the Mad Hatter’s Tea within the late Nineteen Eighties. The annual spring fundraising occasion raises cash to keep up the arboretum’s A Girl’s Backyard, a small park with lakeview terraces, fountains, and flower plots behind the DeGolyer Home. However the well-liked luncheon is extra competitors than backyard celebration. Every Mad Hatter’s has a theme, classes, superstar judges, and an outrageous and frenetic hat competitors.

Visitors design their very own caps to theme and peacock down a runway in hopes of impressing the judges. It’s a enjoyable competitors, and “the hats have gotten more and more extra elaborate and decadent over time,” Hardin instructed D Journal earlier this month. Girls have proven up with butterfly releases, Massive Tex replicas, and even reside goldfish mounted upon their heads. 

Hardin stated organizers hoped for extra scaled again seems to be for this 12 months’s theme, “Majestic Mad Hatter’s Luncheon – A Celebration of English Class.” The company didn’t get the memo. They got here in flamboyant and Ascot-worthy fascinators, caps, and hats and matching outfits. Some ladies arrived with teacups and finger sandwiches glued to their hats. Many got here with towering tulle, floral, and butterfly creations. One visitor wore a reproduction of Princess Diana’s well-known “revenge” gown. One other even got here with a large marijuana leaf on her hat—this 12 months’s luncheon was held on April 20, 4/20.

“It’s a slight visible overload. It’s an terrible lot to soak up,” stated superstar choose and British photographer David Yarrow, who famous the equipment right here weren’t alleged to be “inconspicuous and swish.” 

Visitors arrived at 10:30 a.m. and milled about outdoors A Tasteful Place, munching on finger sandwiches and sipping wine, champagne, iced tea, or lemonade from one of many bars. The patio was congested with hatted guests, however company may escape the crowds out to the lakeside backyard. There, they may check candles and perfumes from Woman Primrose Fragrances, and fashions in designs by Sachin and Babi Ahluwalia stood like statues within the gardens. 

The solar burned by way of the clouds in the course of the competitors, making everybody scorching and sweaty within the humid air, however that by no means impeded the “English Class” hats duking it out for the day’s crowning achievement: a class win from the judges. 

This reporter witnessed elbowing to the road, company hiding their drinks, and a few heavy-duty flirting. However the judges targeted on the equipment themselves. “I feel the extra effort that’s made, the extra the trouble must be acknowledged,” Yarrow stated. 

Judging, although, was powerful.

“My class was not sponsored by Pastime Foyer, Michaels, or scorching glue,” stated GRO Floral and Occasion Design artistic director Nathan Johnson, who judged the “Chelsea Flower Present: Most Artistic use of Contemporary Botanicals” class.  The award went to Kristi Boylan, who received by default as a result of her “Wars of the Roses” hat was the one headpiece there that really used actual flowers. 

Previous Mad Hatter’s chair Barbara Bigham had a equally tough time judging the “The Hybrid: Greatest English Backyard Hat with a Texas Twist” class. “Girls, I used to be just a little dissatisfied in you,” she instructed the group earlier than giving the award to a different previous Mad Hatter’s Chair, Claire Catrino, who wore feathers she gathered at a Texas ranch. “That poor chook was in [flight] just some days in the past,” Bigham stated.  

There have been eight judging classes, starting from most true to theme to greatest group, however the organizers added a last-minute award, “Lifetime Achievement,” to honor Kunthear Mam-Douglas. 

“I do know not a soul on this room goes to be stunned,” Bigham stated, asserting Mam-Douglas. She had received “greater than I feel anybody else ever had.” 

Mam-Douglas then climbed onto the stage in a shocking crown, gown, and practice, all adorned with photos of points plaguing the world and of Cambodia. Regardless of the levity of the occasion, Mam-Douglas stated she needed to carry some gravity to the day. The longtime Mad Hatter’s attendee recounted how she just lately returned to her start nation of Cambodia, the place she went to recollect her household’s escape almost 50 years in the past in the course of the nation’s revolution from the Khmer Rouge regime of the Seventies. An estimated 2 million folks died. 

“I’m a genocide survivor,” Mam-Douglas stated. “I retraced my path. However but, I retraced 17 hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. The life that they lived. The struggles that they endured. The separations of household.”

She had tears in her eyes as she instructed her story, and Mam-Douglas obtained a standing ovation from many within the viewers. 

In contrast to the earlier 12 months, the hat awards had been introduced after the luncheon. Tables had been cut up between A Tasteful Place and Rosine Corridor, and company loved a lunch of rooster salad, strawberries and cucumbers, and cannolis for dessert. Occasion co-chairs Anne Stodghill and Kristina Wrenn, in addition to Hardin, gave opening remarks and inspired everybody to bid on the silent public sale. Accessible by way of an app, the silent public sale included dozens of things, together with Lanie Wilson tickets, a Hallmark Christmas film set go to, facials, jewellery, and many present playing cards. 

Later, designer Michael Faircloth got here to the stage to provide a chat on the historical past of hats. Faircloth acknowledged that normally this portion of this system was usually a method present, however he inspired company to “eat up, drink up, pay attention up, then go house and put your ft up.” He spent the following 20 minutes explaining the varied shapes of hats, just like the triangle and wrap; well-known headgear over time, like Jackie Kennedy’s inauguration pillbox hat; and the historical past of the accent. 

After Faircloth’s discuss, it was time for the guests to name it a day, seize their goodie luggage stuffed with tea and biscuits, and head house. The storm clouds had been darkish and gloomy as company waited within the valet line, however the climate held off. Then, because the final stragglers left the arboretum, the rain lastly started to fall. 

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Catherine Wendlandt

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Catherine Wendlandt is the net affiliate editor for D Journal’s Residing and Residence and Backyard blogs, the place she covers all…