This is my piece for the Royal Ascot Hats and Fashion Collaboration. It’s called YARE after its source of Inspiration “The Dancing Devil of Yare”

The Piece’s Inspiration comes from the masks wore by The Dancing Devils Of Yare. This is a religious festivity celebrated on Corpus Christy Day, a ritual dance is performed by the so-called “Dancing Devils”, who wear colorful garments (commonly all red), layers of stripped fabric, masks of grotesque appearance and also accessories like crosses, scapulars, rosaries and other sorts of amulets. They dance to the rhythm of the bamba, a music style that is more reverential. The entire performance represents the victory of Good over Evil.

I thought as the masks are basically wore over the head, not just the face, they would be quite good for inspiration for a Hat and also Ascot tends to have some really wild hats on the day . The piece is made with Wafer paper, edible pens, flower paste and sugarpaste and to add a less sinister look I added some flowers [Orchids are Venezuela’s National Flower] and left the eyes of the mask but omitted other features like real eyes , but the eyes level is around the black roses, and if you look at that level i think you can see it as it should be wore.

Hope you like it!