About

Jenny Mathison-Foster of Bay Willow DesignJenny Mathison-Foster has a passion for making hats and loves to use her design background to create something unique for her many clients. Jenny has a double major in art history and design with a fiber emphasis. She worked for 20 years with Crate & Barrel as a designer, working in the store and at corporate in Chicago. There she immersed herself not only in spatial planning but eagerly learned to recognize and curate great design in everyday objects. While still at Crate & Barrel, she read an article on hat making, and was amazed at how they were made. The process felt familiar as it contained aspects of both design and fiber arts. It took nearly 5 years of searching to find classes in millinery, but when she did, she knew that hat-making felt like home.

15 years later, starting with 125 vintage wood hat blocks, Jenny set out to open a bespoke millinery shop and atelier. She opened a shop in historic downtown McKinney,Texas in 2015. In 2019 she closed her shop to concentrate on her bespoke creations. The new atelier is in the historic Cotton Mill less than a mile from the downtown McKinney square.

Jenny's years of living and working in the design world come through in her custom and ready-made hat designs. She strives for a Bay Willow hat to be fashionably relevant, yet timeless, and to enhance the natural beauty of the wearer. Hand made using old world millinery methods, the finest materials, and with an exceptional eye to design and detail.

Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself.

Coco Chanel
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