Lisa Ackerman (Lakeview) is a master hat shaper; she customizes palm leaf hats for the individual wearer, and also cleans and reshapes felt hats. Shaping a hat to a person’s head requires technical skills and perception to balance the person’s face, head, and body to the hat shape. Ackerman is known in her community as the “hat lady.”
Bio
Growing up in Lakeview (Lake County), Lisa Ackerman learned hat cleaning and shaping by working in her father's dry cleaning business where cowboys dropped off their felt hats. Today, Lisa follows her lifelong dream, selling palm leaf and broad-brimmed hats she buys through an importer to western-wear hat lovers and shaping them to each customer's head, face, and body. This is a talent few people have, but that Lisa has developed into a specialty. Her business, Bull Horn Hat Company, takes her to shows all around the West in Oregon, Nevada, and California where she sells and shapes hats from her vending booth. She also cleans and shapes felt cowboy hats using specialized equipment in her Lakeview business she started around 2005. The trick, she says, is getting the right hat and the right shape for each wearer. Lisa says “When I have a lot of customers come up to me and say 'I like your hat,' it's because it looks good on me. And that's the selling feature. It might not look good on you.” She has honed her skills and is now known as “the hat lady” by local 4-H’ers at the county fair. She now does a bit of leather braiding, making bands for some customer's hats.
