Sports
From Broadway to the Kentucky Derby: The woman behind the Derby's most coveted hats
It’s a crisp, sunny morning in late March, 40 days until the Kentucky Derby.
I’m in a small midtown Manhattan studio, in a showroom filled to the brim with towers of handmade hats. One of the projects on this week’s docket: A hat requiring 150 handmade silk roses, one for each year of the Kentucky Derby’s unbroken history. Each rose is individually cut and sewn here on site.
“We’ve made 44 roses so far,” says Carol Sulla, director of operations and sales for Christine A. Moore Millinery.
Which leaves “only” 106 roses to be sewn before the first Saturday in May.
Christine Moore is the woman behind many of the Derby’s most coveted hats. She built her early career working on Broadway shows before opening her own shop and focusing on millinery, the craft of hat-making. Moore was the first featured milliner for the Kentucky Derby and received the commission of “Kentucky Colonel” from Governor Andy Beshear in 2022.
The celebrities who have worn her hats top the A-List — Katy Perry and Jennifer Lopez are among her numerous clients — and Moore’s hats have made appearances in shows like Gossip Girl, Nashville and The Carrie Diaries. During Derby hat season, which roughly starts in January, they’ll ship out upwards of 1,000 hats, all designed and crafted here in this small studio.
And now I’m here to find my Derby hat.
Patty Ethington in 2009, wearing a Christine A. Moore hat that would one day sit in the Kentucky Derby Museum. (AP Photo / Patti Longmire)
It’s possible that Moore’s most famous hat was a Kentucky Derby commission in 2009. Worn by Patty Ethington of Shelbyville, Ky., the red hat was designed to look like a massive flower and could fit three people under its brim. A photo from the day went viral, and the rest is — almost literally — history: The hat ended up in the Kentucky Derby Museum for 10 years. Ethington is now known for her larger-than-life Derby hats. “The bigger, the better,” she says.
This year, for the 150th anniversary of the Derby, Ethington broke out the big red hat and is bringing it back.
“The very first one that Christine made for me is the one I’m redoing this year,” Ethington tells me. She and Moore worked together to adapt the hat to a new outfit without making any irreversible changes. “We’re putting black in the hat, so I can just add a little bit of a different flair to it, but I can still bring it back to the original red hat that was in the museum.”
For Derby attendees, the dress-to-the-nines fashion game is as much a draw as the race itself — and honoring history is a big part of their calculations, especially on its 150th anniversary.
“I probably started planning my outfit for the Derby three months ago, and I knew I wanted to pay tribute to the Derby,” says Priscilla Turner, another client of Moore’s. “I really wanted to match the caliber that I know other people are coming with.”
A Singer sewing machine sits in Christine Moore’s millinery studio in New York.
For Moore, prepping her clients for “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” involves hundreds of hours of meticulous planning and exacting work.
Millinery, in fact, is as much a game of numbers as horse racing.
The daughter of an engineer, Moore had an early affinity for math but fell in love with the theater in high school, pursuing a degree in costume design and art at Kutztown State University.
It all came into focus when she was partnered with a milliner at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theater. Perhaps thanks to her father’s engineering genes, Moore realized she had the brain for precision measurements, while her flourish for design and sculpting sparked her creativity. In 1990, she moved to New York City to work with renowned milliner Rodney Gordon, whose work has appeared in countless Broadway shows.
Four years later, Moore took the plunge, opening her shop on 34th Street. She had no idea how her business would grow, nor did she fancy herself a Derby hat maker. She knew a little about horse racing but didn’t quite grasp the fashion connection to the race until 2000, when she was invited to speak at a boutique in Louisville. She packed three hats for the trip, completely unaware of the pull of Derby fashion, and when attendees snapped them up, she knew she’d found her niche.
Moore’s schedule is jammed now with trunk shows and appearances at other races, including the Arkansas Derby and Florida Derby. She is on call in Louisville for Derby week — creating hats, meeting customers and making last-minute emergency adjustments.
Despite her well-earned prestige, Moore has remained intentionally mom-and-pop in her business model. Her husband, Blake Seidel, is her business partner, and Sulla has been with Moore for eight years. Sulla grew up 15 minutes from the Belmont race track but knew little about horse racing and came to Moore via the theater. She worked in props and was looking for something steadier than the contract-to-contract work Broadway offers.
Many of Moore’s designers come from similar theater backgrounds, with Moore offering them part-time work and additional income to carry them through their otherwise peripatetic career arc.
There are hundreds of hats, samples and fabrics inside the store.
Moore’s studio is on the 10th floor of a building on Manhattan’s bustling 34th Street, wedged between a Foot Locker and an H&M and facing the window displays of the iconic Macy’s flagship store. To get there, I proceed up a tight elevator and into a narrow hallway I can only describe as “greige,” through a fluorescent-lit stairwell and finally to an unassuming brown door with the sign: “CHRISTINE A. MOORE Millinery.”
When the door opens, I’ve stepped through the looking glass. I’m greeted by color from floor to ceiling — bows, brims, flowers, ribbons, feathers, silks, striped hat boxes and vintage fashion posters.
A few steps through this showroom, I walk into the back workroom where the real magic happens: The room isn’t large and is quiet but quite busy, with the hum of sewing machines and steamers. Eight people are ironing, steaming, shaping, cutting, pinning and hand-sewing hats and trims. Brightly colored spools of thread adorn the walls and work surfaces. A board pinned with dozens of ribbons in rainbow colors hangs above an AC unit. There’s Tupperware filled with tiny glittery balls, another with what looks like glass marbles. I can’t help but think that a Taylor Swift fan could find everything they need for an Eras Tour concert here.
Between the hats and trim hanging on the walls are vintage fashion posters and laminated instruction sheets:
Does it have a lining?
Does it need a comb?
Does it get feathers?
Does it get beads/discoball/wire/embellishment?
Check for rogue needles and pins?
Still not sure? Always check the spec, or ask 🙂
Thread and fabric of every color inside Christine Moore’s store located off 34th Avenue in New York.
Moore is in the back of the room, shaping a pink hat, pulling it down around a head-shaped block and applying steam to stretch and mold it. She’s pulling with a vigor that alarms me, that only the most experienced hands could perform with confidence, almost wrestling the fabric into submission. (When I first arrived, I was afraid to even touch the hats on display, worried that one stray squeeze might undo hours of labor. Sulla assures me: “Just go for it. They’re sturdy.”)
“It’s not like sewing clothing,” Moore says. “We never know what our products are going to be. The hat materials come in, and they’re just a lump.”
This is the first step: Steam the fabric and craft the hat around these blocks. Nearby is a binder filled with instructions on how to create the non-custom lines that go into stores and online. The step-by-step tutorial seems intended to leave no room for error so that the original designs stay true to the designer.
“It’s truly art,” Moore says. “There are a lot of milliners you look at and they’re manufacturers, creating these pieces but without a real solid line to it.” She contends that there are “only a few” hat designers in the United States and Europe who have a distinctive look “like Oscar de la Renta would have.”
Above all, Moore is allergic to pastiche.
“Sometimes people give us research from another designer, which I hate,” Moore says. “I prefer a blank slate. Every designer hates it when they’re given somebody else’s research. I glance at it but I’m never looking at it again. I don’t want anybody else’s work stuck in my head. As a creative mind, it gets stuck, and you keep going back to it.”
Her calling card, and what has drawn so many Kentucky Derby attendees to her door, is her custom, sometimes painstaking, handmade design.
“Besides saying ‘yes we can do it,’ because all of these theater people are trained to do whatever they need to do, we started making our own trim,” Moore says. “I don’t buy it at the store. I make the flowers by hand.”
Moore is famous for the fabric flowers she creates, whether it’s 150 roses to mark the 150th Derby anniversary or a single delicate pansy made to mirror a pair of earrings. Within a few weeks, she will have a customer’s vision completed and shipped.
“She ships them in the most beautiful boxes,” Turner tells me. “Black and white boxing with her label, meticulously packaged.”
Christine A. Moore (l) helps our writer Hannah Vanbiber (r) find a Derby hat.
Back to the March morning in the studio. I’m choosing my hat.
Once selected, the hat will travel with Moore’s entourage to Louisville, where I’ll pick it up as soon as I arrive, several days later than they do. This is a work project, so in some ways, I’m approaching my choice with a dogged attempt at practicality first. I tell Moore that I need a hat I can “run around in, do interviews, not worry about it knocking people in the face.”
She tells me not to worry about that yet; let’s start with what I like. “Walk around and pull out anything that catches your eye.” I’m reminded of what it was like picking out a wedding dress, which for me was fraught with indecision and anxiety. Walking through a showroom, trying to feel your way to something that feels like “you,” requires a mix of forethought and some kind of in-the-moment alchemy.
But Moore knows what she’s doing. By the time I’m done with my loop of the showroom, I have at least seven hats. Moore helps me try them on, sliding a loop over my hair and fitting the top on like a headband, all the while asking about my dress and shoes and drawing out my vision for the outfit. She talks me through colors and shapes.
We narrow it down to a perky pink “Ashlina” fascinator created from hand-sculpted patterned paper toyo straw, trimmed with a hand-cut and sewn silk petal flower and beaded centers. The magical moment for me was when Moore stepped over and tugged it gently down to my brow line — lower than I ever would have thought a hat should go! — and suddenly, everything popped.
This was the one.
For Moore, that magical moment is all in a day’s work. “Christine is very good at looking at somebody, and within 10 minutes she has their personality, and she knows what won’t just look beautiful on you but will suit you,” Sulla says.
In Ethington’s words, “I know Christine can make the hat special. She’ll say, ‘You gotta trust me.’ And I do.”
The goal, Moore tells me, is always to create something unique.
“You’re part of the artwork; you’re finishing the artwork,” Moore says. “The hat becomes part of you.”
Dana O’Neil contributed to this story.
(Photos by Nando Di Fino and Hannah Vanbiber unless otherwise noted)
Sports
Law firm fighting for women’s sports in SCOTUS battle comments on ruling possibly impacting SJSU trans lawsuit
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A law firm leading the charge in the ongoing Supreme Court case over trans athletes in women’s sports has responded after a federal judge suggested the case’s ruling could impact a separate case involving a similar issue.
Colorado District Judge Kato Crews deferred ruling in motions to dismiss former San Jose State volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the California State University (CSU) system until after a ruling in the B.P.J. v. West Virginia Supreme Court case, which is expected to come in June.
Slusser filed the lawsuit against representatives of her school and the Mountain West Conference in fall 2024 after she allegedly was made to share bedrooms and changing spaces with trans teammate Blaire Fleming for a whole season without being informed that Fleming is a biological male.
Meanwhile, the B.P.J. case went to the Supreme Court after a trans teen sued West Virginia to block the state’s law that prevents males from competing in girls’ high school sports.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is the primary law firm defending West Virginia in that case at the Supreme Court, and has now responded to news that Slusser’s lawsuit could be affected by the SCOTUS ruling.
“We hope the ruling from the Supreme Court will affirm that Title IX was designed to guarantee equal opportunity for women, not to let male athletes displace women and girl in competition. It is crucial that sports be separated by sex for not only the equal opportunity of women but for safety and privacy. Title IX should protect women’s right to compete in their own sports. Allowing men to compete in the female category reverses 50 years of advancement for women,” ADF Vice President of Litigation Strategies Jonathan Scruggs said.
Slusser’s attorney, Bill Bock of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, expects a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the legal defense representing West Virginia, thus helping his case.
(Left) Brooke Slusser (10) of the San Jose State Spartans serves the ball during the first set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Oct. 19, 2024. (Right) Blaire Fleming #3 of the San Jose State Spartans looks on during the third set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. ( Andrew Wevers/Getty Images; Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“We’re looking forward to the case going forward,” Bock told Fox News Digital.
“I believe that the court is going to find that Title IX operates on the basis of biological sex, without regard to an assumed or professed gender, and so just like the congress and the members of congress that passed Title IX in 1972, allowed this specifically provided for in the regulations that there had to be separate men’s and women’s teams based on biological sex, I think the court is going to see that is the original meaning of the statute and apply it in that way, and I think it’s going to be a big win in women’s sports.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared prepared to rule in favor of West Virginia after oral arguments on Jan. 13.
Slusser spoke on the steps of the Supreme Court on Jan. 13 while oral arguments took place inside, sharing her experience with a divided crowd of opposing protesters.
With Fleming on its roster, SJSU reached the 2024 conference final by virtue of a forfeit by Boise State in the semifinal round. SJSU lost in the final to Colorado State.
Slusser went on to develop an eating disorder due to the anxiety and trauma from the scandal and dropped out of her classes the following semester. The eating disorder became so severe, that Slusser said she lost her menstrual cycle for nine months. Her decision to drop her classes resulted in the loss of her scholarship, and her parents said they had to foot the bill out of pocket for an unfinished final semester of college.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education determined in January that SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of the situation involving Fleming, and has given the university an ultimatum to agree to a series of resolutions or face a referral to the Department of Justice.
Among the department’s findings, it determined that a female athlete discovered that the trans student allegedly conspired to have a member of an opposing team spike her in the face during a match. ED claims that “SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected the female athlete to a Title IX complaint for ‘misgendering’ the male athlete in online videos and interviews.”
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SJSU trans player Blaire Fleming and teammate Brooke Slusser went to a magic show and had Thanksgiving together in Las Vegas despite an ongoing lawsuit over Fleming being transgender. (Thien-An Truong/San Jose State Athletics)
SJSU Athletic Director Jeff Konya told Fox News Digital in a July interview that he was satisfied with how the university handled the situation involving Fleming.
“I think everybody acted in the best possible way they could, given the circumstances,” Konya said.
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Sports
Myles Garrett cited for speeding a ninth time, an elite pass rusher seemingly always in a rush
Myles Garrett is in a hurry to become the greatest pass rusher in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end set the single-season sack record in 2025 and has cracked the top 20 career leaders after only nine seasons.
“I’m going to take that down, and I prefer I take it down in the next five years,” Garrett told Casino Guru News last month.
Off the field, however, his urgency to get from point A to B is a problem. He’s accumulating speeding tickets at an alarming rate.
On Feb. 21, Garrett was handed his ninth speeding ticket since his NFL career began in 2017. He was cited for driving 94 mph in a 70-mph zone on Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.
The citation from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office says Garrett was driving his green 2024 Porsche at 1:35 a.m., returning home after attending a Miami of Ohio basketball game in Oxford.
Body cam footage shows the officer telling Garrett that she kept the charge under 100 mph so that a court appearance wouldn’t be mandatory. Garrett reportedly still holds a Texas driver’s license — he attended Texas A&M — and told the officer that he did not have an Ohio license.
Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett wears a jacket displaying his girlfriend Chloe Kim before the women’s snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy.
(Lindsey Wasson / AP)
The officer wrote that the famously affable Garrett was “kind and cooperative,” and that drugs and alcohol were not a factor.
Garrett’s need for speed flies in the face of his persona. He has written poetry since high school, peppers social media with inspirational sayings and donates time and money to several charities.
His girlfriend is two-time gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, for whom he wrote a poem he shared on social media: “You enrapture fools to kings, and exist without a peer, put on this Earth for many things, but our love is why you’re here.”
Verse hasn’t slowed his roll. On Aug. 9 he was cited for ticket No. 8, clocked at 100 mph in a 60-mph zone in a Cleveland suburb a day after the Browns returned home from a preseason game at Carolina.
Garrett’s seventh ticket followed a frightening crash in 2022. He flipped his gray 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S off State Road in Sharon Township and he and a female passenger were injured. He was cited for failing to control his vehicle due to unsafe speeds on what had been a slick roadway.
A witness told a responding police officer that Garrett’s vehicle went airborne, took out a fire hydrant and rolled three times. Garrett sustained shoulder and biceps sprains and was sidelined for the Browns’ game that week against the Atlanta Falcons. His companion was not seriously injured.
Cleveland television station WKYC reported that in September 2021 Garrett was stopped twice in a 24-hour period — for driving 120 and 105 mph. The infractions occurred on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70 mph, and he paid fines of $267 and $287.
A year earlier, Garrett was cited for driving 100 mph in a 65-mph zone of Interstate 77 — again while driving a Porsche — and paid a $308 fine. He accumulated his first batch of speeding tickets in 2017 and 2018, and the police reports recite similar circumstances: Garrett driving well over the speed limit, cited without incident, paid a nominal fine.
The piddly fines certainly aren’t a deterrent. Garrett, 30, and the Browns agreed to a four-year contract extension in March 2025 that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history at the time. The deal pays the seven-time All-Pro more than $40 million a season and includes more than $123 million in guaranteed money.
He set the NFL single-season sack record with 23.0 last season, surpassing the 22.5 accumulated by T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan. Garrett has 125.5 career sacks, averaging 14 a season, a pace that would enable him to break Bruce Smith’s career record of 200 in five years.
“That is definitely on my mind to go out there and get,” Garrett said. “That’s a goal I’ve had for years now since college.”
Garrett has declined to discuss his driving habits.
“I’d honestly prefer to talk about football and this team than anything I’m doing off the field other than the back-to-school event that I did the other day,” he told reporters after ticket No. 8 in August, referring to a charity appearance.
“I try to keep my personal life personal. And I’d rather focus on this team when I can.”
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Former ESPN broadcaster Keith Olbermann once again incited backlash on social media Wednesday after he called late legendary college football coach Lou Holtz a “legendary scumbag” in an X post on the day Holtz was announced dead.
“Legendary scumbag, yes,” Olbermann wrote in response to a clip of Holtz criticizing former President Joe Biden in 2020 for supporting abortion rights.
Olbermann received scathing criticism in response to his post on X.
“You’re a scumbag that needs mental help,” one X user wrote to Olbermann.
One user echoed that sentiment, writing to Olbermann, “You’re the real scumbag here. Lou Holtz had more class, integrity, and genuine decency in his pinky finger than you’ll ever show in your lifetime.”
Another user wrote, “You’re a grumpy, lonely, Godless man. All the things Lou Holtz was not.”
Keith Olbermann speaks onstage during the Olbermann panel at the ESPN portion of the 2013 Summer Television Critics Association tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel July 24, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Olbermann has made it a pattern of sharing politically charged far-left statements that are often combative and ridiculed on social media, typically resulting in immense backlash.
After the U.S. men’s hockey team’s gold medal win, Olbermann heavily criticized the team for accepting an invitation from President Trump to the State of the Union address. Olbermann wrote on X that any members of the men’s team who attended the event were “declaring their indelible stupidity and misogyny,” while praising the women’s team for declining the invitation.
In January, Olbermann attacked former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler for celebrating a women’s rights rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments for two cases focused on the legality of biological male trans athletes in women’s sports.
Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz listens before being presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in Washington, D.C., Dec, 3, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s still about you trying to find an excuse for a lifetime wasted trying to succeed in sports without talent,” Olbermann wrote in response to Wheeler’s post.
In 2025, Olbermann faced significant backlash after posting (and later deleting) a message on X aimed at CNN contributor Scott Jennings, that said, “You’re next motherf—–,” shortly after the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
Holtz was a stern supporter of President Donald Trump, even saying in February 2024 that Trump needed to “coach America back to greatness!”
Near the end of Trump’s first term, shortly after former President Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Trump awarded Holtz with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.
After Holtz’s death was announced Wednesday, several top GOP figures paid tribute to the coach on social media.
Those GOP lawmakers included senators Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; Todd Young, R-Ind.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; representatives Greg Murphy, R-N.C.; David Rouzer, R-N.C.; Erin Houchin, R-Ind.; and Steve Womack, R-Ark.; and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Indiana Gov. Mike Braun; U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon; and Rudy Giuliani.
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Lou Holtz, former Notre Dame football coach, addresses the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda Summit at the Marriott Marquis July 26, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
At the time of publication, prominent Democrat leaders have appeared silent on Holtz’s passing, including prominent Democrats with a football background.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who worked as an assistant high school football coach; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who was a recruiting target for Holtz in 1986 as a college prospect; Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who played in the NFL; and Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Ill., who played football for the University of Illinois, have not posted acknowledging Holtz’s death.
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