Vanilla Powell Beane (September 13, 1919 – October 23, 2022),

Vanilla Powell Beane (September 13, 1919 – October 23, 2022),

Her given name at birth was, Vanilla Powell and she was known as DC's Hat Lady.
She was an African American milliner and business woman.

One of her hats was displayed and is in the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).
In Washington, D.C., there is a Vanilla Beane Day on September 13.

Beane was born and in Wilson, North Carolina on September 13, 1919, to Martha Hagans Powell and James Powell, the sixth of seven children.

She worked on local farms, including tobacco and cotton and attended a single room school in Nash County, North Carolina. She graduated from Charles H. Darden High School in 1940, but as part of the class of 1938.

Beane moved to Washington, D.C. in the 1940s to follow her two sisters since there were more jobs available. She married her husband Willie George Beane in 1942, which she remarked on, at 99 years old, "I married a fellow, Willie Beane, and by my named being Vanilla, I came up with Vanilla Beane".

While being an elevator operator at the Washington Millinery and Supply Company, she decided to try making clothing – including hats – since she was around fabric and was hired in 1955 as a seamstress.

While working at the millinery shop she also had a job as mail clerk at the General Services Administration.

She was inducted into the hall of fame of the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers, a trade group founded in 1949 in New York City for Black fashion professionals, in 1975.

In 1979, when the millinery shop she worked at moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland, she bought its remaining supplies and fixtures and opened Bené Millinery & Bridal Supplies In the Manor Park neighborhood in Ward 4, she served the African American community in that area. She continued working at her store multiple times a week even after her 100th birthday.

Throughout her career she made custom hats for local and national figures, including poet Maya Angelou and civil rights activist Dorothy Height; one of Beane's hats is featured on Height's USPS Forever stamp.

One of her hats is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The NMAAHC also features a detailed 3D scan of a green velveteen wrap hat from the 1950–1960s. The government of Washington, D.C. has designated September 13 Vanilla Beane Day in her honor.

She had three children; the eldest died in 1980, and her husband died in 1993.
Source: wilipedia

Left photo of Mrs. Beane as a young woman, courtesy of granddaughter Jeni Hansen.
Right photo credit: Jeff Elkins/WaPo
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Obituary

Vanilla Beane, The District’s ‘Hat Lady,’ Dies At Age 103

Her radiant hats, aimed mostly at African American women for use at church, weddings and funerals, were featured on postage stamps and in museum collections.

By Michael S. Rosenwald /WaPo

Updated October 25, 2022 at 3:44 p.m. Edit/Published October 25, 2022 at 11:46 a.m. EDT

Vanilla Beane, whose radiant hats topped the heads of legions of African American women at church, weddings and funerals in the District for half a century, earning her the title of “D.C.’s Hat Lady,” died Oct. 23 at a hospital in Washington. She was 103.

The cause was complications following an aortic tear, said her grandson Craig Seymour.

Mrs. Beane’s hats, which she had designed and fabricated at the Bené Millinery and Bridal Supplies shop on Third Street NW, were featured on postage stamps and in collections at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Every hat was one-of-a-kind.

“Nobody wants to walk into a church and see someone else wearing their hat,” she once said.
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Poet Maya Angelou wore one of Mrs. Beane’s millinery creations. Civil rights activist Dorothy I. Height donned them for meetings with presidents and other officials. “Hats give me a lift and make me feel real special,” Height explained — a sentiment shared by the countless others who shopped at Mrs. Beane’s store.

Mrs. Beane worked six days a week into her 100th year.

“Some people like real fussy hats,” she told The Washington Post in 2009. “Others like sophisticated hats, and a lot of people like simple hats. I try to please people regardless of their race or background.”

Mrs. Beane made her hats the old-fashioned way, wetting buckram — a stiff cotton — into molds decorated with all manner of fabrics. Keeping her fingernails cut short, Mr. Beane made tams, turbans, panamas, sailors and cloches. Decades of the repetitive fashioning turned her fingers stiff and rough.

“They look like I have been digging potatoes,” she said.

Vanilla Powell was born in Wilson, N.C., on Sept. 13, 1919, the second youngest of nine siblings. Her father was a carpenter and farmer, and her mother was a seamstress who also worked in White people’s homes washing their clothes.

Growing up during the Depression instilled a robust work ethic in the Powell children, who worked in the fields picking tobacco and cotton. On Sundays, they rested and walked to Sandy Point Baptist Church, where women sat in the pews wearing fancy hats.
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“In the past, when most Blacks had blue-collar jobs, dressing up on Sundays was a cherished ritual,” Craig Marberry, co-author of “Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats,” said in a 2019 story about Mrs. Beane in The Post. “The hat tradition grew out of the idea that you were expressing how God has blessed you. The more flamboyant a hat, the more God has blessed you.”

After graduating from high school in 1940, Vanilla Powell moved to Washington and two years later married Willie Beane Sr., producing the name that endlessly charmed her customers and friends, though it took her a little bit to realize its novelty.

“I was in the drugstore and the pharmacy said, ‘Do you know there is a Vanilla Beane?’” she recalled in a television interview in 2020. “I said I guess it was meant to be.”

In Washington, Mrs. Beane worked as an elevator operator in a downtown building with a hat store called Washington Millinery Supply. She was enamored by the intricate hats and the craft of making them, so she bought some supplies and began making them herself.

Eventually she showed her hats to the store’s owner, Richard Dietrick Sr. “She had very much talent, but she didn’t have the design know-how in those days,” Dietrick recalled later. “She picked it up very quickly.”

Mrs. Beane eventually began working for him, and when he moved his shop to Gaithersburg, Md., she bought his supplies and, in 1979, opened her own store. She was a shrewd businesswoman, convincing Ethel Sanders, the owner of Lovely Lady Boutique in Bethesda, Md., to move her store near Bené Millinery.

“People knew us as a team,” Sanders recalled in 2019. “Women would come in for a dress and I’d send them to Vanilla for a hat. Or they’d go for a hat and she’d send them to me for an outfit.”

Mrs. Beane’s shop had White customers, as well. One of them was Sherry Watkins, who founded the Rogue Hatters, a group of women who collected Mrs. Beane’s hats. Watkins owned 75.

Mrs. Beane taught them the rules of hat wearing.

“Don’t match the hat to the outfit,” Watkins recalled. “Just buy a hat you like and the outfit will come. Never wear your hat more than one inch above your eyebrows. Slant it to look more interesting and possibly even risqué.”

Mrs. Beane seemed to never get designer’s block. Her designs constantly evolved.

At the National Museum of African American History and Culture, one of Mrs. Beane’s hats is green velveteen.

“The hat is circular with a rounded peak and constructed by layering a strip of fabric over itself in a wrapped design,” the museum’s description says. “The base of the fabric is a light green while the pile is a darker green, giving the hat a two-tone appearance.”

Another is a red felt bicorn style.

“The hat is composed of a single piece of stiff felt that has been folded up at the center front,” the museum notes. “The dome of the hat is cylindrical, with the raised brim attached at the top of the crown. There are red felt bows affixed at the attachment points.”
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Mrs. Beane’s husband died in 1993. Their son, Willie G. Beane Jr., died in 1980. Ms. Beane is survived by two daughters, Margaret L. Seymour of Charleston, S.C., and Linda R. Jefferson of the District; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Mrs. Beane was such a fixture of Washington that then-Fox News host Chris Wallace named her “Power Player of the Week” in the summer of 2020.

Wallace asked her what made a proper church hat.

“Well,” she answered, “any hat that’s not too fancy, not too wide.”

The host marveled at her longevity.

“In these challenging times,” Wallace said, “it’s nice to know there are still some constants in the world, like Vanilla Beane.”
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../vanilla-beane-dc.../