The Beginning: Two Friends & A Love For the west
We are Lia LaRue and Nicole Johnson, hat makers, long-time friends, and the hands behind Nic & Maude. We’ve spent more than seventeen years doing life together: making music, raising kids, traveling, creating, and finding inspiration in the places and people around us.
Some of our most meaningful trips were out West—Marfa, Jackson Hole, Whitefish—places with wide-open landscapes and a kind of grit and beauty that stays with you. Out there, hats felt less like accessories and more like a part of you, shaped by where you’ve been and what you love. That feeling stuck with us.
But as avid hat wearers, we could never quite find the hats we imagined—pieces with character, soul, and the kind of individuality that made them feel lived-in from day one.
SO WE DECIDED TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE THEM.
Learning the craft
We started small: late nights with millinery books, hours of videos, trial and error, and the generous guidance of our friend and local hat maker, Jacob Hillenbrand, who encouraged us to keep shaping, steaming, and trying again. What began as a curiosity quickly became a craft we fell in love with—the meditative nature of the work, the tradition behind it, the satisfaction of creating something by hand that exists nowhere else in the world.
Before long, our “practice hats” turned into requests from friends. Then friends of friends. Then strangers. And slowly, piece by piece, a business revealed itself.
Why we’re called nic & maude
In millinery, it’s tradition to name a hat company after yourself or a family name, a nod to the lineage of the craft.
Nic is short for Nicole.
Maude comes from Lia’s great-great aunt, Aunt Maude, a milliner in the 1940s and 50s who owned a hat shop in downtown Detroit. She was known for her resilience, artistic spirit, and ability to create beauty no matter what life handed her.
Her story lives on in family conversations, retold with admiration and warmth. Naming our shop after her felt like honoring those who came before us—women who created with their hands, trusted their instincts, and paved their own way.
NIC & MAUDE ISN’T JUST A NAME. IT’S A LEGACY OF CRAFT, INDEPENDENCE, AND INTENTION.
What we believe about hats
No two hats will ever be the same. That’s the point.
We believe a hat should feel like an extension of you—shaped with purpose, worn with confidence, and filled with stories waiting to happen.
Every Nic & Maude hat begins with:
Western-weight beaver & rabbit fur felt hat bodies from the top U.S. distributors
Premium, often vintage materials sourced from small makers across the country
Intentional craftsmanship featuring hand-creased custom hats in-house—shaping, steaming, sanding, stitching, and finishing every detail in-house
Personal touches, from silk and feathers to burn marks, initials, vintage playing cards, or bullet casings
Carrying on a tradition, creating something new
What began as a shared love for hats and the spirit of the West has grown into something more—a place where people can come to create something meaningful, whether they’re designing a custom hat from the ground up or customizing one in our shop while they’re passing through Franklin.
Our goal isn’t just to make hats. It’s to make something personal—something you’ll wear for years, something that feels like yours the moment you put it on.
Visit Us
We shape, steam, design, and create every hat from our shop inside The Factory at Franklin. Whether you’re local, traveling, or visiting with friends, we’d love to help you craft a hat that feels like it has a story before you even walk out the door.
