CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

Me­le­na Si­mon-O’Neil is a woman who lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly wears many hats. She is a busi­ness psy­chol­o­gist, en­tre­pre­neur, cor­po­rate train­er and speak­er, cer­ti­fied wed­ding con­sul­tant, and event de­sign­er.

Si­mon-O’Neil is the co-own­er, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and prin­ci­pal con­sul­tant at Emer­ald De­signs And Event Ser­vices, one of the coun­try’s lead­ing wed­ding and event plan­ning and de­sign con­sul­tan­cy.

Be­yond her work in the wed­ding and spe­cial events in­dus­try, she is ac­tive­ly in­volved in vol­un­teerism and ded­i­cates most of her free time to ac­tiv­i­ties and ini­tia­tives fo­cused on youth and women em­pow­er­ment.

Si­mon-O’Neil is the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Fe­male Ex­ec­u­tives of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AFETT), one of the lead­ing net­works for pro­fes­sion­al women in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She al­so owns and man­ages Cou­ture Hats By Me­le­na, an up­scale hat bou­tique sup­ply­ing hats and el­e­gant cloth­ing for her clien­tele which in­cludes par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, pas­tors and ex­ec­u­tive women.

Si­mon-O’Neil’s hat col­lec­tion start­ed as a hob­by, but lat­er, on Oc­to­ber 1, 2015, she went in­to en­tre­pre­neur­ship, and hats off to her on her up­com­ing eighth an­niver­sary as a hat de­sign­er.

Her styl­ish cre­ations have adorned some of the A-lis­ters at pres­ti­gious events such as Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo’s in­au­gu­ra­tion on March 20 and In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rades.

Some of Si­mon-O’Neil’s clients in­clude Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George, MP, Coun­try Head for the IDB in Trinidad and To­ba­go Ca­ri­na Cock­burn, THA As­sem­bly­man Sec­re­tary for Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy Zor­isha Hack­ett, THA Coun­cil­lor As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Sec­re­tary lead­ing Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Plan­ning and Labour Cer­ti­ca Williams-Orr, Se­nior Ex­ec­u­tive at IBM Griselle Smith, well-known fash­ion styl­ist for pro­fes­sion­al women–Off the Chain Fash­ion’s Don­na Marie Alexan­der and the late Di­ane Holdip, for­mer reg­is­trar at Hugh Wood­ing Law School and the wife of Jus­tice Mal­colm Holdip.

East­er is the busiest time for the tal­ent­ed milliner to de­sign her fab­u­lous “hat cou­ture” head­wear cre­ations for her cus­tomers.

Speak­ing to WE on Holy Thurs­day, Si­mon-O’Neil said “We hire more staff the week be­fore East­er. The busiest day of the year for us is East­er Sat­ur­day or Holy Sat­ur­day (glo­ri­ous Sat­ur­day).

“We have a wide in­ven­to­ry of lux­u­ri­ous hats, fas­ci­na­tors and cock­tail hats. The more ma­ture crowd would go for what we call whole hats and for­mal hats while the younger vogue and fash­ion­able crowd like fas­ci­na­tors. (Fas­ci­na­tors are small­er than hats and are at­tached with a clip, head­band, or comb and in most cas­es are al­so de­signed to have beads, flow­ers, or feath­ers on them.)

“It’s a plea­sure to make women feel and look won­der­ful. There is a cer­tain con­fi­dence and ‘hat­ti­tude’ my clients ex­ude when they’re dressed in one of our pieces.

“I hope to re­fine my millinery skills to shift our di­rec­tion from main­ly re­tail­ers and hat styl­ists to full-time milliners cre­at­ing pieces to suit our Caribbean chic style.”

She said if her cus­tomers can­not come to her es­tab­lish­ment in Ari­ma, she goes to them and de­scribed the ex­pe­ri­ence as very per­son­alised ser­vice.

Si­mon-O’Neil added that if they in­di­cat­ed a pref­er­ence for a par­tic­u­lar colour, pat­tern or style in hats, she and her team would gath­er sev­er­al op­tions and do like a sort of mo­bile trunk show, go to the par­tic­u­lar clients and style them with the op­tions and ac­ces­sories.

Her cus­tomers, in­clud­ing quite a few high-pro­file clients peo­ple, come from all parts of the coun­try, with one client from Pt Fortin who makes the trip to buy more than five hats at a time.

Si­mon-O’Neil, who was born in Kendal, To­ba­go, al­so has a large clien­tele there and of­ten makes emer­gency ship­ments of hats need­ed by her cus­tomers in To­ba­go for the next day’s events.

The board mem­ber of the To­ba­go Bridal As­so­ci­a­tion re­vealed that her jour­ney in­to the world of millinery start­ed when she was grow­ing up with her late fash­ion­ista grand­moth­er Joy­cie Si­mon Gunn in To­ba­go who loved hats.

Si­mon-O’Neil, who is a mem­ber of the UK-based As­so­ci­a­tion for Busi­ness Psy­chol­o­gy, said that peo­ple from her grand­moth­er’s gen­er­a­tion did not step out with­out their hats, bags and shoes match­ing. She not­ed her fash­ion sense came from her. As a young woman go­ing to church, in or­der to make a fash­ion state­ment look com­plete she sel­dom went out with­out a hat.

Si­mon-O’Neil, who holds a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies ma­jor­ing in Psy­chol­o­gy and Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment, rem­i­nisced that she wore hat pieces that she ob­tained from Bar­ba­dos, vis­it­ing very of­ten as she had rel­a­tives there.

Her first source of very gor­geous hats, she said, came from a gen­tle­man in the mid­dle of Bridgetown.

Si­mon-O’Neil, who al­so has a Mas­ter’s de­gree in Busi­ness Psy­chol­o­gy from Franklin Uni­ver­si­ty, USA, said when she trav­elled to the US to buy hats and wore them to church peo­ple ad­mired them and want­ed one.

She said “Sis­ter Eli” told her that God had spo­ken to her that she need­ed to open a hat store and “re­mind­ed her an­i­mat­ed­ly” for years un­til 2015 when her hat dreams be­came re­al­i­ty.

De­pend­ing on the oc­ca­sion–from the beach, Jazz Fes­ti­val, bridal show­ers, pri­vate cel­e­bra­tions, birth­days, tea par­ties, hat-themed par­ties, so­cial events, fu­ner­als, wed­dings, church and her client’s out­fit if they want­ed to not stand out too much, were new to wear­ing hats, or want­ed to make a state­ment–they will choose a suit­able styled hat or small­er fas­ci­na­tor and style them ap­pro­pri­ate­ly with cloth­ing, bags, gloves, brooches, hat­pins, jew­el­ry and oth­er ac­ces­sories as well.

She not on­ly caters for ladies but for men and chil­dren al­so.

Si­mon-O’Neil is in­spired by world-renowned milliners such as Ar­turo Rios from the USA, and Philip Trea­cy in the UK.

She said her in­spi­ra­tion al­so came from na­ture, T&T, cit­i­zens’ own amaz­ing sense of style, the coun­try’s beau­ti­ful women and tal­ent­ed peo­ple and amaz­ing de­sign­ers.

Si­mon-O’Neil’s suc­cess is al­so due to the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port of her hus­band, Kevin O’Neil, and their teenage daugh­ter, Kae­lyn O’Neil. The moth­er of one is a men­tor to many fe­male en­tre­pre­neurs and guides them in build­ing and ex­pand­ing their busi­ness­es.