MEDIA

Humble' hat is tops - Hopkinton floral designer's creation wins Kentucky Derby

Original Story and photo caption from The Providence Journal, Saturday 6/21/2008
By Donita Naylor, Journal Staff Writer

A Hopkinton farm has bragging rights to winning in the 2008 Kentucky Derby. But it's not for a horse. It's for a hat.

Nancy Gingerella of Sunflower Hill Farm in Hopkinton, who also has astore by that name in Westerly, received word this week that the floral chapeau she created for this year's race will spend the next year on
display in the Kentucky Derby Museum in Louisville.

"My hat was this humble thing," she said, up against "all these hats that are from milliners" in New York City and designers who charge $800, $900, $1,000, even $1,200 for one creation. Even if she had charged her
friend fully for the hat, her price would have been "considerably less."

Her friend, Jo Ann Orlandi of Westerly, commissioned the hat to wear at the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby this May. Through an association with William Sequino Jr., once town manager of Owensboro, Ky., and now town manager of East Greenwich, Jo Ann's husband, Bill Orlandi, is a member of the Honorable Order of the Kentucky Colonels, a charitable group, and has attended the last four derby races.

In Louisville on the first Saturday in May, the mission is to prove the fastest horse. But the pageantry rides on women's heads, in feathers and flowers climbing flights of fancy to competitive extremes.

Last year, Orlandi asked Gingerella to make a hat to match the dress she was going to wear. This year, she gave Gingerella free rein on the hat and then searched for a dress to match.

Gingerella, 55, has done floral design for 22 years. After she and her husband moved from Westerly to the farm in Hopkinton, she used dried flowers and herbs grown on their farm. Now, she works in what she calls
upscale permanents and botanicals. The roses, zinnia, peonies, thistle, hypericum, Queen Anne's lace and grape hyacinth in the winning hat may tempt a sniff, they look and feel so authentic.

But they're latex or silk.

"People don't want to buy dried anymore; it doesn't last," she said yesterday from her store at 136 Oak St. in Westerly, where she sells her creations - wreaths, floral arrangements and frames and mirrors her husband, Michael, makes from salvaged wood.

One of the eight winning hats from 2007 that will be taken out of the museum's glass case to make room for this year's winners was also designed by Gingerella. She made two hats last year, and the one she
made at the last minute - with only 24 hours' notice, for Ann D'Alessandro of Charlestown - was chosen for display under glass.

Each year, visitors to the museum vote for the hat they like best among the many categories on display. In January, Internet visitors to the museum's Web site will also be able to vote. For details, go to: www.derbymuseum.org/comingsoon/newexhibits.html. For 67 outlandish hats from 2008: www.horse-races.net/library/derby08-hats.htm. Also visit www.sunflowerhillfarm.com/aboutus.html.

Nancy Gingerella of Hopkinton at her store, Sunflower Hill Farm, 136 Oak St., in Westerly. For the last two years, a hat designed by Gingerella has been chosen for display under glass at the Kentucky Derby Museum in
Louisville, Ky.

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