Last year I read a very moving poem by the Chinese American poet, Professor Wang Ping. To give you an idea of how heart stirring the words are, I am adding a couple of lines here:

Poem Title : Things We Carry on the Sea

We carry tears in our eyes: good-bye father, good-bye mother
We carry soil in small bags: may home never fade in our hearts
We carry names, stories, memories of our villages, fields, boats
We carry scars from proxy wars of greed

(You can read the full poem at https://poets.org/poem/things-we-carry-sea)

It immediately prompted me to contact Professor Wang Ping to request a collaboration on a fashion project, which she graciously accepted. My competition hat is part of that collection. I was thrilled to see the HATalk Competition theme, Water. Because it exactly fits my hat titled, ‘Things We Carry On The Sea.’

I have created this hat to mimic water in the sea, using special materials to give it iridescence, that one witnesses in the foamy ocean waves, on a bright sunny day.

The hat, which is sculpted in a wave shape, also feature tassels at the front. If you look carefully, you can see words from Wang Ping’s poem embedded in what looks like clear droplets of water, hanging from silver chains at the front of the hat.

Note: Entries have been not been edited or proofread to protect the integrity of the maker's original meaning.