LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Fancy hats and protective face masks.
Kentucky Derby milliners across the country have swiveled their talent to protect America’s health care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.
A month and a half before May 2, the biggest day at Churchill Downs - things were humming along as planned at The Christine Moore Millinery and Olivia Griffin’s The Mysterious Rack hat shop in downtown Louisville.
In New York City, this was crunchtime for designer Christine Moore, who along with her five staff members, was hustling to fulfill hundreds of custom hat orders for customers from across the country in advance of the 146th Kentucky Derby.
But then the coronavirus began its sweep across the country, and suddenly production at the sought-after milliner’s workshop and showroom ground to an unexpected halt.
“I needed to disband my staff and send them home with work,” Moore said. “They carried what they could onto the subway, and I loaded my car with fabric, ribbons, feathers, my streamers - all the supplies I needed to continue fulfilling orders,” said the New York City-based hat designer.
A Featured Milliner of the 146th Kentucky Derby who sells custom hats at Louisville boutiques, including Rodes for Her, Moore tossed one other item into the trunk of her overstuffed car. Along with the sinew and silks, the esteemed hat maker made room for some light-weight, thin gauge wire.
“I wasn’t using it for my 2020 Derby designs, but for some reason, I thought it might be important,” she said.
At this point in the coronavirus pandemic, everyone is wearing a mask if they are going anywhere in New York City, Moore said, and that gave her an idea for all the Kentucky Derby hat materials she hauled to her home in Queens.
“I was contacted by a nurse on Long Island who had bought a hat from me for Derby,” said Moore. “She loved the hat but said what she could really use now were masks for her team.”
Another customer who buys hats from Moore for the Belmont Stakes each year reached out in need for masks for the hospital where she works in housekeeping.
And so the designer who sells Kentucky Derby hats for hundreds of dollars apiece got busy. Using a pattern she designed after researching how Asian countries are sewing protective face masks, Moore began to turn the materials she intended for Kentucky Derby hats - cotton broadcloth, skinny ribbon, elastic and that fine gauge wire - into hundreds of masks.
With the help of her husband and business partner Blake Seidel, the hat designer delivers daily batches of the specially designed masks to various health care workers throughout the New York City area. The masks are sanitized by hospital workers before they are put into use and can be washed at the end of each shift.
“I am making these washable masks with a slit so they can slide in their N95 protective masks. The flexible wire allows the user to pinch the mask around their nose,” she said. “I am sewing each of these masks to be as perfect as my Kentucky Derby hats.”
A week into the process, Moore is able to complete one mask every 20 minutes. To help fill the demand, her employees are making the shift from Kentucky Derby couture to cutting the material and sewing masks for the foreseeable future.
But “eventually we will run out of Derby hat supplies for these masks,” Moore said.
On her website, which is still populated by beautiful spring hats for the Kentucky Derby and other races, there is a donation page asking for funds in the amount of $5 to $25 to help Moore purchase the materials to continue making masks.
“I just heard from a nurse in Louisville who needs (masks), and we’ll get them to the staff as fast as we can,” Moore said. “Typically, this would be our crunchtime for Derby, and we know how to work fast.”
Griffin, the owner of The Mysterious Rack and The Limbo tiki bar, 411 W. Chestnut St., is also busy crafting handmade masks at her shop for Louisville-area hospitals and medical professionals.
Griffin would also normally be working on Kentucky Derby hat orders but now that the spread of the coronavirus has caused the horse race to be rescheduled until the fall, she’s using her time to meet the need for face masks with filters.
“I’m currently using vacuum filters, but I’m working on getting polypropylene, and I’m in need of any cotton fabric and elastic donations,” Griffin said. “If I had five people, we could probably make several hundred in about six hours, but by myself, I can only make 30 to 40 a day.”
Whether you’d like to offer to help sew, donate materials, donate money toward supplies or purchase a face mask for yourself, visit the The Mysterious Rack website at mysteriousrack.com for more information.
Griffin and Moore aren’t the only people offering their help and assistance to medical and health professionals by making masks.
The University of Louisville Speed School of Engineering is using its small arsenal of state-of-the-art 3D printers to produce much-needed face shields to protect Kentucky health care workers, as is GE, which is using its 3D printing operations and micro-factory FirstBuild to manufacture face shields, Kevin Nolan, president and CEO of GE Appliances, told The Courier Journal.
Crestwood neighbors Amy Jean Tyler and April Matney, who have banded together to lead a drive via Facebook to sew masks for Norton Children’s Hospital, recently posted a video on how to make the masks, using specifications passed to Tyler by Louisville pediatric anesthesiologist Amy Judge.
And Dr. Tyler Jury, a Pewee Valley dentist and his West Kentucky University fraternity brother, Clay Simpson, have also teamed up to create face shields. The duo, who own Clayton & Crume, a high-end leather good shop in NuLu, is using the shop’s sewing machines to craft face shields out of a variety of plastics and foam.
“We’re trying to supply the government agencies and hospital systems that need these for their front-line medical providers,” Jury previously told The Courier Journal.
Dana Kirkwood has joined other members of the United Methodist Church in Simpsonville to help to make masks for health care workers treating COVID-19.
In Simpsonville, Dana Kirkwood and members of her sewing group at the United Methodist Church heard of the enormous need for face masks for Louisville-area health care providers and also got to work.
“We heard there is a need for 5,000 face masks in the area,” said Kirkwood. “We are a small church, so we can’t make that many, but we are hoping to put a small dent in that number.”
The sewing group, which typically makes quilts and clothing for those in need, has coordinated a pickup and drop-off protocol for supplies and finished products. Completed face masks are distributed to medical facilities where they are in high demand as the fight against the coronavirus continues.
“I think about the doctor or nurse who will be able to use what I am making,” Kirkwood said. “This is one small thing I feel like we can do to help.”
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend cloth material to protect against COVID-19, cloth masks can be used for other purposes, according to Norton Healthcare. Homemade masks are being distributed to visitors, patients and staff for use at home.
“We are making strategic decisions to best utilize our supplies, but there is a well-documented nationwide shortage in several items, and we are grateful to the community for their outreach in this time of need,” Scott Watkins, senior vice president of operations at Norton Healthcare, said in a news release.
Mayor Greg Fischer said in March that the Louisville Metro Government has acquired a supply of personal protective equipment, including masks, and is distributing them to the city’s three major health care systems and other providers with COVID-19 cases.
“All the hospitals have the supplies they need for now, but we are prepared to help,” Fischer said in a news release. “Louisville Metro Government is monitoring the national supply of PPEs and is working to acquire more.”
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