Minerva Smith-Jackson stands outside her Denver millinery, her head topped by a soaring black hat.
If a chapeau could be architecture, this angular number with sequins and beads would rank with the Denver Art Museum’s swooping new wing.
“Look at me, baby. Watch how it’s done,” says Minerva, hand on hip, sashaying down the sidewalk Thursday with her mile-high strut. “Watch my hat. Watch me walking in it. I am everything that I want to be and you want to be too. I know I am fine.
“This hat is telling that story.”
Minerva’s own story began 63 years ago in Mississippi. She grew up with 14 siblings whose parents taught them formal manners “in case we ever got invited to the White House.”
She remembers her mother preparing her brood in their Sunday finest for church, then lining up at the door. “She would put on her gloves, articulate her hat just so, look back at us and nod,” Minerva says. “We knew we were ready to move.”
Her mother wore Mr. John and Jack McConnell brand hats. So that’s what you’ll find at Minerva’s Hat and Fashion Palace, which she opened in 1986 after moving to Denver with two kids, a niece and $500.
The shop on Welton Street is a Denver mainstay, earning Minerva the nickname “The Queen of Five Points.” Despite its fading paint and aging fixtures, there is a nobility to a place brimming with bright feathers on a block with little beauty.
Last week, the shop was hopping. Regulars — some who have bought hats right off her head — arrived to top off their Easter finery.
To the older women, Minerva offered the pillbox hats once admired on Jackie Kennedy.
To the younger set, she pointed out the JLo-style chartreuse fedora in her window, its sequins glittering in the sun.
In came church ladies and Orthodox Jewish women, all seeking to cover their heads before God as elegantly as possible.
Devotees also include Denver attorney Frances Koncilja, who has worn hats — fabulously — since her Pueblo childhood attending church with her Italian-Slavic Catholic family.
“They wouldn’t let me in without a hat,” she says.
Koncilja now turns to Minerva for special occasions.
“I’d rather spend my money on a hat than with a therapist,” she says. “She makes you feel good about yourself and the rest of the world.”
For her elite clientele, Minerva stocks a special corner with her brightest and most gravity-defying hats. She points to a light-pink model with tulle spiraling like rose petals. “These are for the pastors’ wives, the mothers of the church who want all eyes to be on them.”
Elite or not, everyone gets a hug.
Having struggled since last year with breast cancer, Minerva gives an extra-tight squeeze to the ailing customers. She takes time most days to teach those undergoing chemotherapy how to wrap a scarf around their heads to cover their baldness, and then tie on another “for attitude.” She has snagged city financing to open a satellite shop at Stapleton to cater largely to cancer survivors.
“Women sometimes have to relearn the value of looking and feeling good,” she says. “They’re so stressed out that they have forgotten to enjoy life and just be beautiful. Sometimes the best remedy is just to feel like a lady.”
A half-century removed from her Mississippi childhood, Minerva is still awaiting that White House invitation.
“It’ll come,” she says, adjusting the kettle-brimmed silver hat she chose for herself for Easter. “And when it does, I’m ready.”
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
