The glad hatter: Milliner is thrilled to be working on PTC's 'My Fair Lady'

If you do an Internet search for "Ascot hats," you'll get 831,000 matches. And out of that, if you click on "images," your screen will be filled with pictures of fabulous hats — more than 61,000 of them.

Then there are the hats inspired by the Ascot scene in "My Fair Lady," the musical theater staple by Lerner and Loewe. The Ascot hats are so iconic that Pioneer Theatre Company brought in a milliner to make the hats for the musical, which opens the 2008-09 season on Friday.

"I marveled I could get a college degree doing something I'd done my whole life," said milliner Sharon King, who, after years of making doll clothes, studied costume design in college. "We had a whole semester of millinery, which is really unusual. I didn't know at the time how good a program I was in."

With the encouragement of her teachers, King pursued millinery — the business of ... hats.

Thirty years later, King has kept herself very busy, "It's definitely a full-time job ... and I'm always doing things I've never done before." "You'll always have work," King adds. "I'm in the Motion Picture Union and if you look at the list of costumers, there are thousands of them and only about four or five milliners."

King's work spans from stage to screen, working — most notably — on "Titanic." "It was very intense, and so exciting," King said, mentioning numerous times what an honor it was to be working "with so many authentic pieces."

And there were some added perks. While fitting a red beret worn by a young girl in the movie, "I had to open the side band. Inside that hat band was what they did at the time — they used folded-up newspaper. And lo and behold, I unfolded it and it was a millinery ad from 1886. That was really a treasure."

The Ascot hats in "My Fair Lady" are from an era similar to "Titanic." "They were typically very large hats anyway, and they went over the top for this production," King said. "They're huge, large-scale eye-catching. On the edge of curious and kind of ridiculous but amazing. That's why it's very fun, it's very whimsical."

And the actors agree. "They're amazing!" said Elizabeth Stanley, who is playing the lead role, Eliza Doolittle. "I had mine on for the first time the other night. It makes you feel completely transformed, which seems like a lot to say for one article of clothing."

PTC regulars saw Stanley in "Beauty and the Beast," as Belle. "A hat makes you taller. It makes your presence that much more grand. The way it frames your face — it accentuates your eyes, your hair.