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
Jon Jones requests UFC release after Dana White says legend was ‘never’ considered him for White House card
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Mixed martial arts legend Jon Jones ended his retirement from UFC simply because he wanted a spot on the “Freedom 250” fight card at the White House in June.
But, when UFC CEO Dana White announced the card during UFC 326 this past weekend, Jones wasn’t among the fighters. As a result, he has requested a release from his UFC contract.
White was candid when asked about Jones following the UFC 326 card.
Jon Jones of the United States of America reacts after his TKO victory against Stipe Miocic of the United States of America in the UFC heavyweight championship fight during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 16, 2024 in New York City. ((Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images))
“Never, ever, ever, which I told you guys a hundred thousands times, was Jon Jones ever even remotely in my mind to fight at the White House,” White explained, per CBS Sports. “Some guy with Meta Glasses filmed him talking about his hips – that his hips are so bad. And I don’t know if you guys saw that flag football game where he can barely run. Jon Jones retired because of his hips. He’s got arthritis in his hips. Apparently, doctors say he should have a hip replacement.”
White added that “the Jon Jones thing is bulls—,” saying that he texted the fighter’s lawyer saying he would never be on the White House card despite Jones saying he was in negotiations for it.
UFC ANNOUNCES CARD FOR WHITE HOUSE EVENT
The Meta Glasses incident White is referring to came from a viral video, where Jones, unaware he was being filmed, discussed issues with his hips to a fan.
On Monday, Jones composed a thorough response to White’s comments about him and the White House Card. He previously posted and deleted social media explanations, but Monday’s appeared to be his final statement on the matter.
UFC President Dana White speaks after UFC Fight Night at Toyota Center on Feb. 21, 2026. (Troy Taormina/Imagn Images)
“Yes, I have arthritis in my hip and it’s painful, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fight,” Jones, who retired a heavyweight champion in 2025, said. “So let me get this straight, if I had accepted the lowball offer, suddenly my hip would be fine and I’d be on the White House card? That doesn’t make sense. I even received stem cell treatment last week to get ready for the White House card, and training camp was scheduled to start today. I was preparing to be ready.
“I understand business deals fall through sometimes, but going out publicly and saying things that aren’t true isn’t right. After everything I’ve given to the UFC, the years, the title defenses, the fights, hearing that I’m ‘done’ is disappointing. Especially when as recently as Friday UFC was calling me trying to get me on that White House card for a much lower number.”
Jones finished his statement by saying he “respectfully” asks to be released from his UFC contract.
Jon Jones enters the ring before facing Stipe Miocic in the UFC heavyweight championship fight during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024 in New York City, New York. (Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)
“No more spins, no more games. Thank you to the real fans who know what’s up,” he wrote.
The UFC did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Fox News Digital.
Jones is considered one of the best UFC fighters of all time, owning a 28-1-1 record, which includes his last bout with Stipe Miocic, knocking him out to take the heavyweight title belt. He is also a two-time light heavyweight champion.
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Twelve days ago the U.S., a World Cup host country, launched a full-scale bombing campaign against Iran, a country that has qualified to play in the tournament. That’s never happened before.
Five days later, that same World Cup host began military operations inside the borders of Ecuador, another World Cup qualifier, half a world away. That’s never happened before either.
With the tournament scheduled to kick off in three months, those events have soccer scholar Jonathan Wilson questioning whether it’s wise for the World Cup to go on at all.
“It seems to me, for each passing day, it’s less and less likely that the World Cup can happen,” he said.
That take seems unduly alarmist said David Goldblatt, a British sportswriter and sociologist who is a visiting professor at Pitzer College in Claremont. Anything short of a full-scale war inside the U.S. would not be enough to pull the plug on the tournament now, he said. Especially with FIFA expecting revenues of as much as $11 billion.
“I mean, it’s not a good look,” Goldblatt conceded. “And certainly when set against FIFA’s official pronouncements on its role in encouraging world peace and cosmopolitan celebrations of a universal humanity, none of that sits terribly easily.
“But in terms of actually running the World Cup, I don’t think it’s going to make very much difference at all.”
However, with the Trump administration open to engaging in more international conflicts, there’s little doubt this World Cup, the largest and most complex in history, will also be the most political in history as well.
Complicating things further is the fact the current conflict in the Middle East hasn’t been limited to just the U.S. and Iran. Iranian missiles have hit both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among other countries, and Jordan has fired on U.S. assets.
Those three countries are World Cup qualifiers as well.
The fate of a soccer tournament pales in importance to the death and destruction the conflagration in the Middle East has produced, of course. But the need for unity is the very reason there’s a World Cup in the first place.
When French soccer administrator Jules Rimet founded the tournament 96 years ago, he believed soccer could be a tool for international peace. And in the early years of the tournament, Rimet, FIFA’s longest-serving president and a talented diplomat, was able to limit the impact of geopolitics on the World Cup, watering down Mussolini’s influence on the 1934 World Cup, for example, and steering the 1938 tournament away from Hitler’s Germany.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino has taken a far different approach, courting President Donald Trump’s support despite his growing number of global conflicts.
A week before bombs began falling on Iran, Infantino appeared at the inaugural meeting of Trump’s Board of Peace wearing a red cap with ‘USA’ on the front and the numbers ‘45-47’ — a reference to Trump’s non-consecutive presidencies. That act was so blatantly partisan, IOC president Kirsty Coventry said her organization would investigate whether Infantino, an IOC member, breached the terms of the group’s charter, which requires members to act independent of political interests.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino holds up a USA hat as he attends the inaugural meeting for the Board of Peace at the Institute of Peace in Washington on Feb. 19.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
“Infantino has absolutely breached every FIFA protocol on neutrality,” said Wilson, author of “The Power and Glory: The History of the World Cup.”
“Absolute neutrality is always impossible and not desirable, but it has clearly gone way, way, way beyond. The peace prize looked grotesque at the time. It looks even worse now. And I can’t see how the future will look kindly on Infantino. I think Infantino has to some extent legitimized Trump.”
This is hardly new behavior from Infantino, who had close relationships with Vladimir Putin ahead of the 2018 tournament played in Russia and Qatar’s leaders ahead of the 2022 tournament despite their well-known human rights violations.
The list of countries Infantino is asking to overlook poor relations with the country hosting the majority of World Cup games this summer is growing.
Consider that Denmark, which administers Greenland, an autonomous territory Trump has also threatened to invade, can qualify for the tournament in a European playoff that will take place later this month. Then there’s World Cup qualifiers Haiti, Ivory Coast and Senegal, who aren’t at war with the U.S. but whose citizens have been banned from entering the country to cheer for their teams. That completely contradicts a promise from Infantino, who said “everybody will be welcome” at the 2026 World Cup.
“If I had a crystal ball I could tell you now what is going to happen,” Heimo Schirgi, the World Cup chief operating officer for FIFA, said Monday. “But obviously the situation is developing. It’s changing day by day and we are monitoring closely. [But] the World Cup will go on right? The World Cup is too big and we hope that everyone can participate that has qualified.”
Goldblatt, the Pitzer professor, said Infantino’s action are understandable since he has few cards to play against Trump.
President Trump speaks as he receives the FIFA Peace Prize as FIFA president Gianni Infantino applauds on Dec. 5 the Kennedy Center in Washington.
(Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
“What’s Infantino going to do? What levers can you pull?” he asked. “You can threaten to take it away. That’s not happening. Moral admonishment? Who’s going to take that from FIFA? It is a farcical idea that anybody thinks that the president of FIFA has any kind of collective moral authority or any role as a spokesperson for the progressive part of the world.
“They may fantasize that this is the case. But it is morally and politically absurd that any of us should expect that of these people. So if you are Infantino and that is the case, you know what works with Trump? What works is flattery. So of course he’s gone down that path.”
The games, Goldblatt said, will go on even if bombs are still falling. And that may not be an entirely bad thing.
“Football’s a great distraction. That’s partly why it’s so popular,” he said. “It will be virtually impossible, if the war continues, for that not to be a central element of like, the meaning and the purpose of what we’re all doing here.
“How we’ll feel and what it will look like, I don’t know. It will be very strange. Football is unpredictable and extraordinary. Something will happen that will warm our souls.”
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
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Australia granted asylum to five players from the Iranian women’s soccer team who were visiting for a tournament when the U.S.-Israeli attacks against Iran began.
Australian federal police officers on Tuesday transported the five women from their hotel in Gold Coast, Australia, to a “safe location” after they made asylum requests to meet with Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and to finalize the processing of their humanitarian visas.
“Last night I was able to tell five women from the Iranian Women’s Soccer team that they are welcome to stay in Australia, to be safe and have a home here,” Burke said on X.
The move comes after the team refused to sing the Iranian anthem before their first Women’s Asian Cup match early last week against South Korea, although they later sang and saluted the anthem in two subsequent matches, including ahead of their final match, when they were eliminated by the Philippines.
IRANIAN WOMEN’S SOCCER FANS SHOW SUPPORT FOR TRUMP AS TEAM APPEARS TO PIVOT ON NATIONAL ANTHEM STANCE
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke poses with five Iranian women soccer players who have been granted asylum in Australia, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (Australia Ministry of Home Affairs)
“I don’t want to begin to imagine how difficult that decision is for each of the individual women, but certainly last night it was joy, it was relief,” Burke told reporters after signing the documents. “People were very excited about embarking on a life in Australia.”
The five women said they were happy for their names and pictures to be published, according to Burke, who emphasized that the players wanted to make clear that they were not political activists.
The Iranian team arrived in Australia for the tournament before the war against Iran began on Feb. 28.
After the team was eliminated from the tournament over the weekend, they faced potentially returning to a country still under bombardment. The team’s head coach, Marziyeh Jafari, said on Sunday the players “want to come back to Iran as soon as we can.”
An official squad list named 26 players, as well as Jafari and other coaches.
While only five players were granted asylum, Burke said the offer was given to everyone on the team.
IRAN FLAG REMOVED FROM PARALYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY AFTER SOLE ATHLETE WITHDRAWS OVER TRAVEL SAFETY CONCERNS
Iran players during their national anthem ahead of the Women’s Asian Cup soccer match between Iran and the Philippines in Robina, Australia, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (Dave Hunt/AAPImage via AP)
“These women are tremendously popular in Australia, but we realize they are in a terribly difficult situation with the decisions that they’re making,” Burke said. “The opportunity will continue to be there for them to talk to Australian officials if they wish to.”
It remains unclear when the remaining players will leave Australia.
“Australians have been moved by the plight of these brave women,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters. “They’re safe here and they should feel at home here.”
“They then had to consider that and do it in a way that did not present any danger to them or to their families and friends back home in Iran,” he continued.
The asylum offer came after U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday called on Australia to grant asylum to any team member who wanted it.
Trump had blasted Australia on social media, saying Australia was “making a terrible humanitarian mistake” by allowing the team to be “forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed.”
Supporters react towards a bus transporting Iranian woman players following their Women’s Asian Cup soccer match against the Philippines on the Gold Coast, Australia, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (Dave Hunt/AAP Image via AP)
“The U.S. will take them if you won’t,” Trump said, despite his administration’s efforts to limit the number of immigrants in the U.S. who can receive asylum for political purposes.
Just hours later, Trump praised Albanese in another post.
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“He’s on it! Five have already been taken care of, and the rest are on their way,” Trump wrote.
Albanese said Trump had called him for “a very positive conversation,” about the issue. The prime minister said he explained “the action that we’d undertaken over the previous 48 hours” to support the women.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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