Bonnet, Crowns, Mohawks and Me
The first hats I fell for lived on a high shelf inside one of my grandmother’s large closets, untouched for decades until I discovered them as a child. Festooned with embroidered swans, gold coins, and fake gems, to me they looked like divine portals to a potential future self. I envisioned an adult, sophisticated, elegant version of me, absent my youthful acne and insecurities. My grandmother met my enthusiasm with a thick layer of indifference. She’d worn them in the 1950’s on airplanes, she explained. She easily handed them over to my care, relieved to free up shelf space.
I reserved those precious headpieces for private make believe in my room, but their presence inspired me to start wearing wide, dramatically brimmed black hats to school in fifth grade, covered in ribbons and fake flowers. This practice stopped soon after some targeted bullying by my peers. But it also made me associate hats with a bolder, more expressive, less fearful me.
Wearing hats, after all, means taking up more physical and visual space in a female body. Years later, my high school therapist, who had helped me through repeated acts of searing sexist harassment by my male peers, ended our final session by slipping a small gift box into my hands. Inside I found a pin shaped like a hat.
It took me a longer time than I like to admit to make the connection between these formative childhood experiences and my current creative output. Inspired by both fashion history and Jewish ritual, I craft outlandish headpieces and costumes as my artistic practice. And I create female characters to go with these costumes, each representing distinct political values in contemporary Ashkenazi life.
Each persona is tethered to a specific holiday, aesthetic movement, and set of Jewish values. Creating and becoming these characters allows me, through photographic portraits and live performances, to portray the fissures and divisions I experience in our tribe, but from a place of joy and play.
My first of these costume creations, Taylor Bonnet, re-envisions a 1960’s headpiece worn by glamorous film star, and Jewish convert, Elizabeth Taylor, as a celebration of Passover. Unlike hers, my hat creation is crafted from items referencing the Seder meal. Fake parsley, eggs, and dozens of matzo printed sticks adorn its surface. This character contends with notions of assimilation and “passing” in privileged Ashkenazi circles, balancing her strong Jewish identity with a desire to copy and hide within elevated WASP aesthetics. She is fun, glamorous, “non-political,” and purposefully oblivious to the fraught elements present in her set of identities.
For Sabbath Queen, my next character, I’ve employed the aesthetics of Queen Elizabeth I of England to depict Judaism’s most famous female monarch— the invisible, holy entity whose weekly Sabbath visits every Friday begin the holiday. This outfit includes ritual objects used routinely during the Sabbath; the hat is fashioned from actual challah bread, and a real challah cover makes up both the bodice and shoulders. Sabbath Queen references not only Queen Elizabeth’s looks, but also her politics, specifically her central role in starting the British Empire. My satirical version is a haughty, superior, rightwing Zionist, imperialist, intolerant, and lethally confident monarch.
In contrast to these two women, Pesach Punk, my current wearable project that premiered in the spring, references the gorgeously aggressive visuals of the punk movement to portray the Angel of Death from the Passover holiday, a divine figure associated with murder and loss. Sporting an enormous green mohawk and covered in black and white matzo print, this rebellious figure asserts radical dissent against widely accepted, politically conservative tribal norms. An angry, righteous activist, she passionately opposes colonialist, bigoted regimes, from Israel to America.
Alongside their political themes, all three projects also celebrate crafts historically associated with women, including fashion design, millinery work, and embroidery. Collectively, they make up a feminist, irreverent, honest, and unapologetically female portrait of contemporary Ashkenazi life. Creating them feels, to me, like a delicious return to the playfulness and boldness of my younger self, before her patriarchal environment and religion nearly succeeded in dimming her light.
More of Danielle Durchslag’s work can be found on her website, danielledurchslag.com.
