Danielle Wears (and Sells) Many Hats

Danielle Schubert, 29, born in a San Francisco hospital and raised on Mount Tam, will always call Mill Valley her “home base.” While hats were her mom’s idea, designing and selling hats over the last 22 years has played a huge part of her life. We caught up with Danielle in her downtown Mill Valley store, the , on a recent afternoon to discuss her living and working in Mill Valley:

Mill Valley Patch: Where were you born?
Danielle Schubert: San Francisco. The Kaiser Permanente Hospital on Geary Boulevard.

MVP: Were your parents living in Mill Valley at the time?
DS: No, they owned a house on Mt. Tam, but my aunt and uncle live in Orinda, and when I was born we were living near them in Moraga. When I was born, we moved back to the house we owned on Mt. Tam. So I essentially grew up on the mountain in Mill Valley. Really, I am a full-blooded Mill Valleyean. One of the few born and raised here who are actually still here.

MVP: Why hats?
DS: I’m second generation. My mom started the store and we have been in business for 22 years now. Before we did hats, my mom did active wear design for Macy’s and Nordstrom’s. At the time, we were very successful with the line she was doing. Then Macy’s started to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. We couldn’t produce for them anymore due to the changing economy, and so my mom, being the creative person that she was, out of the blue started making hats. She had been in the clothing industry for a while – both in manufacturing and retail – and she had owned her own store many different times in different locations across the U.S., but she decided this time around to do hats, which was very odd for that particular time period and pretty unusual. I mean it still is unusual.

MVP: How did you personally get into it?
DS:  My mom got very sick when I was 16, and she lost her battle to cancer when I was 21. From there, I took over the store. I have always been working here, but I took it over while she was sick, and ran both the Mill Valley store and the San Francisco store (when it existed). When my mom died, I didn’t sell, I kept it. And I keep changing it to fit more of my own personality. 

MVP:  Did you ever ask your mom why she first got into hats?
DS: It’s so funny, when your parents aren’t there anymore to be able to ask those types of questions to that you would have wanted to know. When I was younger, I just never asked stuff like that. My mom was from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Hats were much more common in Europe, so I don’t think it was as odd to her as it was to someone who was born and raised in California. So we were kinda the odd balls, but I’m usually kind of the odd ball [laughter].

MVP:  Considering your custom designs here, would you consider yourself more of a business woman or an artist?
DS: A business woman. I’ve never classified myself as an artist. My mom, she was an artist. Her strengths were different than my strengths. She saw color and flow and texture in a way that people usually had to be trained to see, but, for her, it was effortless. For me, I am much more of a scientific thinker, math and science. I excel at literary arts and those types of areas, but that is only because I have trained myself.

MVP: And how does a business brain help in this store?
DS: Also because of my age I think I understand where we can grow, what we don’t need to do anymore, how we can better serve the needs of our clientele in this small town atmosphere. We want to provide the things we have always provided for our clients, but in a slightly more modern way, and utilizing things such as the Internet and email. That is where I see the age difference coming into play.

MVP: What’s the most enjoyable aspect of your work?
DS:  I hate to say but – look, we run retail here, we don’t run a hospital, we’re not saving lives – but, there are times where you can tell that you have made a difference in someone’s day. A lot of times, our chemotherapy and radiation patients come in, and working with those people in a situation that is really hard and painful for them, if you can make them feel better that day, it makes a really big difference in how you work. It’s one of my favorite things to do. We also have a lot of customers who go to the Kentucky Derby, and I love doing their crazy hats, that’s fabulous because they just tell me to do what I want to do, and that is when I do my best work.

MVP: Obviously, there are a number of ways to interpret this question, and this is a sensitive subject, but how has cancer affected your work and your business?
DS: Well there is a stigma about a woman not having hair in society. It’s very unusual. To put it blatantly, you see a woman without hair, and the first thing you think of is cancer or alopecia. Cancer keeps us very present in here and very thankful. It makes us feel like we’re helping, which is nice. We have done Search for the Cause with Judy Shils, and who now does Teens Turning Green, a fashion show with Celebrate Life where I made a whole bunch of custom hats for their runway. And we try to make people aware of cancer ourselves, we are on the American Cancer Society list, and we have done seminars to help people feel more comfortable while they are in this uncomfortable state.
Also, that's how my mom died, and that is what my childhood was filled with.  It has a very different connotation to me. It’s a sensitive subject with me, but because I work with it on a daily basis, I enjoy working with people with cancer, it makes me feel like I am doing something good. Women feel beautiful when they have their hats on. During such a scary dark time, it’s nice to provide them with something beautiful and more positive.

MVP:  Do you have any famous customers?
DS:  We do.

MVP: Can you name any of them?
DS: Sorry, I can’t [laughter]. But we have had some really amazing people in here from the music industry and the movie industry and working with them is just the coolest thing ever.

MVP:  Are any funny stories of these celebrity encounters… no names attached?
DS: We had one major celebrity contact us for a very specific hat for a highly publicized event, and it needed to be rushed. I called the company and told them I needed a very special hat for a very special person, and I needed in two days, which was asking the world of this company. They made his hat beautifully, and they send it out via DHL from their operation in Canada. They made it so special, they even add a very unique and special feather to it. And, of course, the Wildlife, Fish and Game Department in New York, when it was going through customs, opened the box to make sure it was a hat like the package said, and they saw some weird rare feather. It turns out the feather was not allowed to be imported to California. So the hat didn’t show up on time. So I called up the company, and we couriered in a new one 12 hours before the event, and the hat made it there right on time. It showed up 10 minutes before the event.

MVP: Tell us something about you that might surprise people.
DS: I am finishing writing a novel right now. I just finished the other day, and I am doing my rewrite. I am hoping when I get that done, it will be published. And I am an avid horseperson.

MVP: Where do you see yourself in five years?
DS: Well, I’m living my dream right now. I’m lucky. I’m glad that our business is here in Mill Valley right now, but I see lots of other things for us, maybe even opening another store somewhere else in the country, Las Vegas, Miami Beach, New York, L.A. I also want to develop my personal line more and more. We are also using this store to have people make conscious choices about themselves – for instance, almost nothing here comes from China, it’s all local, and we hope to continue that. We don’t want workers to be abused, and I think if more people jump on that bandwagon, they might incur slightly higher costs, or the store owner may have to make less money, but ultimately it’s worth it, and in a small town like Mill Valley with small businesses, it can really make a difference.

MVP: What are your favorite things about Mill Valley, and why do you still live here?
DS: This is one of the most beautiful places in the world with so much diversity of thought and openness. No matter what I do, or where I go, this is what I call my home base. I moved a lot as a child, and this store, in location, in this area, in this building was the one constant thing in my life. This store is my home.

MVP: If there was one thing you could change about Mill Valley, what would it be?
DS: I wish it still had that deeper sense of community that ran through the owners and landlords in Mill Valley. There is more competition nowadays that breaks us apart at times rather than uniting us. There is something about going back to that grass roots, old Mill Valley town with mom-and-pop stores that I grew up in that isn’t as strong as it was.