Unforgettable Journeys

Designer and founder of Instagram’s chicest hat brand, Yosuzi Sylvester, shares her most venturesome travel stories, bucket-list destinations and gives us an insight into the voyage she embarked on from founding the brand in 2013 to her S/S18 collection

- Carmel Gill

 

Where did the brand begin?

I decided to train as a milliner when I met the artisans who hand weave the WOMA hat in the Guajira Desert of Venezuela in 2013. I envisioned the potential these hats had, but knew I needed millinery training. I spent my weekends and evenings taking courses whilst still working in advertising. It was a hobby that took up all my free time for over a year. During this time, I worked on improving the hat, resolving sizing issues and figuring out what colours/shapes my peers liked or didn’t like. I was raised in Venezuela and spent my childhood exposed to my ancestral Guajiro heritage. Through these traditions, I found an appreciation for native stories and artisanal skills. The WOMA was a traditional hat worn by Guajiros in Venezuela, but unexposed to the rest of the world. Originally its brim was much larger in size to protect the tribesman from the hot desert sun. In 2014 I found a photograph of my grandmother, sporting the original WOMA hat. She had just won the first Miss Venezuela pageant, held in 1956, and was cruising around La Guajira Desert with Spanish reporters.

In 2014, I visited La Guajira Desert with my mum to seek the artisans who made the WOMA hats. We met with the community leaders of the tribe, and received permission to begin working with the artisans from the community. My mother still speaks the dialect and my great grandfather, Cacique Yajaira, was a well-known chief in the area, which helped bridge connections with the tribe.

What inspired your new collection?