Lola Lanyi

Milliner Lola Lanyi was born Lola Viola Erdesz in Czechoslovakia. Following a childhood of serious musical training, she married Armand Stephen Lanyi. Only after having two children did she get interested in hatmaking. Her interest took her to Paris where she earned a diploma from the Cours Mozart school of millinery in 1931. She returned home to Nitra, took exams to get an exemption from a required three-year apprenticeship, and went to work in a hatmaking salon that did the type of work that interested her.

By 1938 when she was ready to open her own salon, with her two daughters in school in Vienna, Hitler’s annexation of Austria provided an impetus for the family to leave. Lanyi’s children were sent to Belgium while she went to London where she found work as a housekeeper. With the sale of some family silver and her fur coat, the family was able to reunite in 1939 and buy passage to Canada. They initially settled in Brantford, Ontario, hoping to farm, but found themselves in a failing venture. After two years of struggle, the family moved to Montreal and Lanyi began making hats with the encouragement of her husband.

The Lanyis set themselves up as wholesalers, selling to Canadian department stores.

Coming out of the war, when imported hats had been banned, Lanyi’s hats offered a degree of sophistication, workmanship and quality of materials not then seen on the Canadian market.¹

Her creations were well covered by the fashion pages of newspapers and magazines in the mid-1940s. While it was Lola’s name on the label, her husband Armand was equally as involved in the business. He became her buyer and found materials with small importers who had been ignored by the larger manufacturers. When they ran out of silk flowers, she began making her own and then enlisted manufacturers to make them for her, who were glad to be able to draw on her design talent for a product they could also sell elsewhere.

She became known for her flower-trimmed hats and her use of bright contrasting colours, which she managed to do with sophistication.

In 1946, her hats were priced at about $60, which included a 50% store markup, but this was a very high price point for the time.¹ When she first began wholesaling her hats, she had difficulty getting the funding she needed, since department stores took 3 to 6 weeks to pay for her goods. Her grocer in Montreal became a financial backer to enable her to continue operating.³

Their studio was described as unpretentious. The couple worked out of the apartment they lived in at 648 Sherbrooke St. West, receiving the public in a large front room papered with photographs, newspaper clippings and advertising tear sheets. Tables and chairs were strewn with materials and hats in progress.⁴

Lanyi created by making sketches but also by working directly with her materials on a form.

She designed her own hat blocks, having some made in Montreal and others in New York.

Her wide brimmed hats were not made with “hoods” but rather straw braid that had to be sewn in a spiral on the block. In 1946, she had four employees in her workroom, and personally inspected each completed hat before it was sent out.

Lola Lanyi was described by the journalist who interviewed her in 1946 as having a shy demeanour. As English was not her first language, it was noted that she spoke in a hesitating manner. She stood about five foot four, and had a pale complexion with dark eyes. She wore her dark hair pulled back into a roll. She favoured plain black dresses.⁵

After Armand’s death in 1948, Lola Lanyi continued to make hats under her label until the late 1960s, although with little attention from the press and far less advertising compared to the years when the couple had worked together. Her hats were advertised as exclusive with The Bay in Western Canada, and Freiman’s in Ottawa, and were not advertised in the Montreal press. Later in life, she was known as a multidisciplinary amateur artist, doing painting, sculpture and jewellery, working with pebbles and driftwood from Laurentian lakes.⁶