Jacey Rhorer will be the first to tell you that when she was a little girl, doing “girly-girl” things wasn’t the first thing on her mind.
Climbing trees, fishing and four-wheeling were much more to her taste.
But something changed along the way to adulthood and now the Henderson native creates some of the “fanciest, frilliest and fashion-forward” hats imaginable, which has earned her the title of “Official Milliner” for the 2025 Kentucky Derby Festival.
In about six months, Rhorer and her Lexington business Rhorer Couture will be in the spotlight at the KDF Dillards Spring Fashion Show. She’ll design and make hats for all of the models, and her creations will be for sale exclusively. Rhorer Couture also be present at the festival’s other major events.
That’s in addition to hand-making hats for her regular boutique customers and individuals who order from her directly. Between now and then she has a lot of hat-making time penciled in on her calendar.
“I’ll be working, working, working,” said the 1996 graduate of Henderson County High School.
Rhorer learned millinery, which she said has been labeled a dying art, in an elective class at Chicago’s Columbia College, where she earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in fashion design.
She said Columbia’s professors taught students every aspect of the fashion industry, but it was the millinery class and the history of that art that became her favorite topic, erasing her original goal of becoming a bridal dress designer.
But the first design job she landed at Chicago’s Linda Campisano Millinery while still in her senior year also had something to do with changing her original trajectory.
“I became the head designer of handmade bridal headpieces, making very intricate pieces with Swarovski Crystals, freshwater pearls along with sterling silver and 14 carat gold wire,” Rhorer said. “After catering to brides and their mothers, I found out real quick that ‘Bridezilla’ is a real thing, and wasn’t for me.”
But the job had the bonus of connecting her with her current passion.
“The cold dark winters were full of warm, bright and beautiful hand-blocked hats for the wealthy Chicago women and high-class tourists that were planning their trips to the Kentucky Derby,” Rhorer wrote in a bio she submitted for the KDF’s “Official Milliner” selection process.
She explained that she used her Kentucky roots and her southern accent when pitching a Derby hat sale, never once telling them that she’d never even attended the “greatest two minutes in sports.”
And as a western Kentucky native her only real exposure to a horse racing environment was summer meets at Ellis Park, which have a personality all their own.
That would all change 10 years later after she met, married and moved to Lexington with her husband, Mark Schmiedeknecht.
Once in Lexington, she said, she experienced the joy and traditions of dressing up for Keeneland Race Track, turning heads on her first outing with a hat she created the night before. She left the track that day with custom orders for hats.
It was the first clue that she could make a “go” with a hat design business in the Bluegrass state though she’d been told otherwise plenty of times.
“I faced skepticism from many who believed the fashion industry was exclusive to cities like New York City, Los Angeles, Paris and Miami,” she said. “During my first spring back (in Kentucky), as a stay-at-home mom, I started designing hats to wear to Keeneland just for fun, and I was constantly being approached for custom orders.”
That same year she submitted a hand-blocked sinamay hat to the Kentucky Derby Museum for a hat contest.
“My hat earned a top spot and was on display at the museum for a year,” she said. “These two things reignited my passion for designing and pushed me to achieve my fashion dreams in Kentucky.”
It was also around that time that a “hat frenzy” came along in the wake of the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Princess Kate with fascinators being part of the rage. That hasn’t really cooled off, especially at Derby time.
So, Rhorer didn’t let the nay-sayers discourage her with geography and launched the J and J Design millinery business in 2010 with her neighbor Jane Thomas. The duo starting making hats seasonally for the Lexington boutiques Bella Rose and Carl Meyers and three other boutiques in Louisville.
“Being in Lexington, I actually have developed a nice clientele,” she said.
She said she was content with that level of work especially since after three years her partner moved to Florida and Rhorer had two young sons, August and Von, to raise.
“I needed to devote quality time to my family,” she said, noting that she had the flexibility of setting her hat-making schedule around school activities while still steadily setting new sales records each year. “As a seasonal gig, designing hats was a perfect job.”
It also provided perfect therapy when she became a widowed mother in 2018.
This past year, after 14 years in the millinery trade and her sons now 17 and 12, Rhorer reinvented J and J Design into Rhorer Couture, expanding into a year-round enterprise producing millinery and artistic fashion accessories.
Part of her “audition” to reach “Official Milliner” status was attending the KDF Dillards Spring Fashion Show with two girlfriends, all of them wearing Rhorer Couture hats.
At that event, a Dillards manager approached her and said “let me talk to you about selling your hats.” After some social media exposure, it just blew up.
The approach to acquiring sales fit Jacey’s philosophy of “if you’re not being seen, you’re not selling,” just like the very first time she went to Keeneland.
She works from home, handmaking all of the details for her hats and especially likes making fabric flowers. She works solo, though her mother Linda helps with tasks when she and husband Ray are in Henderson rather than at their Florida residence.
Rhorer firmly believes she’s the one who’ll always be the milliner.
“It’s a one-of-a-kind art,” she said. “Hiring another designer and putting my name on it would be very, very hard for me to do.”
And though she and her boys might be eating “a lot of frozen pizza” in the spring when every minute will be devoted to hats, it will be worth it.
“It took forever to take a step toward the Kentucky Derby Festival,” she said. “It’s almost unreal that I finally did it.”
***
More information:
Facebook: Rhorer Couture Millinery
Instagram: rhorer.couture
TikTok: jacey.rhorercouture
