TONIGHT’S very special for a Gibbston-based Queenstowner who custom-makes cowboy hats and tack. Millie Aitken, who’s just turned 30, is attending the NZI Rural Women Business Awards at Parliament in Wellington where she’s receiving the ‘young businesswoman’ award. Aitken, who grew up on her dad Dave Aitken’s Gibbston farm, started her original Bar M custom tack business six years ago, then added cowboy hat-making almost three years ago. Having attended Wakatipu High, she went cowgirling on Canada’s Gang Ranch in British Columbia. ‘‘I thought, ‘I can ride [horses] and I got on to this biggest ranch in Canada and was like, ‘holy shit, I can’t ride’, so I had to learn very quickly so I just shut up and followed the cowboys.” At cow camp, at night, Aitken taught herself to make tack — horse accessories like bridles and reins — and turned that into a business, Bar M, after she got home. From her time in Canada, she also learnt to love a quality, big-brimmed cowboy hat. ‘‘I have a really twisted head and if I don’t wear a hat that’s custom-fit to the shape of my head, it twists. ‘‘And so when I got my first custom hat I was like, ‘oh my god, New Zealand needs this’, and so I went to Colorado [in the United States] and learnt how to do it.” After importing premium beaver fur hats from the US, Aitken then custom-fits and shapes them to her customers’ heads. ‘‘I’m the only person in the country that makes a quality cowboy hat, custom-shaped by hand.” She’s exported her hats as far away as Germany and Canada as well as Australia. ‘‘I actually get a lot of customers in their 50s, 60s who have gone and had their first skin cancer cut out, and all of a sudden they’re like, ‘I’ve never worn a hat before but I have to now’. ‘‘Another really cool one is Dad got a cochlear implant a couple of years ago and he couldn’t wear a hat, but now I can shape it around the cochlear implant so I can let anyone that has one actually wear a hat now.” Bar M is now 50/50 split between tack and hats, Aitken says, and while she still does farm work to support her income, ‘‘I hope one day to be able to be full-time with it”. On her website she calls herself ‘‘the chaos coordinator‘‘ and says ‘‘I run a business with more grit than a gravel road — and just enough grace to keep it classy”. As a sideline, she also holds workshop sessions allowing people to make their own custom cowboy hat. ‘‘I have done one wedding where the bride and groom purchased a hat for every guest and so we were there all night shaping hats, which was amazing.” scoop@scene.co.nz
