Derby hats: Pros beyond the merely fashionable
Some people work a lifetime in the faint hope that they and a horse they love will achieve Kentucky Derby fame.
And then there is Charles Matasich, who has been achieving his own version of it for 41 years.
Matasich, a retired steelworker from Proctorville, Ohio, wanders Churchill Downs each Derby Day, posing for photographs and chatting with fans. He’s easy to spot in his rose-covered cowboy hat, white beard and a vest full of kitschy bling.
He is “Derby Man” — it even says so on his business card and Web site.
Matasich, 66, is one of a handful of characters who come year after year. They wear outlandish hats and pose for photos with spectators whose own bonnets are merely fashionable. They love the scene, the conversation and, most of all, the attention. Like mint juleps, they are part of the flavor of the first Saturday in May.
“Derby Man” Charles Matasich is interviewed by David McArthur of Louisville’s WAVE-TV. Photos/Tom Eblen
Derby Man first came 43 years ago with infield tickets and a wife who was seven-months pregnant. He wore a decorated hat, which year after year got bigger and wilder.
“When I would go out in the infield they would say, ‘Here comes the Derby Man.” he said.
“My wife said, ‘Aw that looks gaudy.’ But I come down here and everyone loves it,” he said, adding that Patricia Matasich stopped making the trip with him years ago. “She can’t take all these women having their picture taken with Derby Man.”
His outfit has grown over the years to include temporary rose tattoos on his neck and cheeks. “I’ve threatened to get permanent ones, and my wife threatened to leave me,” he said.
“This is his life,” said Matasich’s daughter, Tricia Vegil. “Last year he was really ill, and I told him that if he worked on it to where he could walk and get better I would bring him back.”
Ernie Trent’s millinery creations began as a lark 32 years ago and soon turned into an identity.
“One time I put a horse on my head just for the heck of it and people said, ‘We like that,’ and it started from there,” he said.
The 61-year-old retired factory worker from Louisville makes a different hat each year and said his 1993 creation is in the Kentucky Derby Museum. He visits several schools each year to help kids make their own hats.
Trent was strolling the paddock Saturday with a homemade model of the twin-spired grandstand built on a pith helmet, complete with little speakers playing horse sounds.
“Every year I say, I don’t know if I’ll go anymore, because it’s kind of dumb-looking,” he said. “But other people love it and love to take pictures of it. It puts them in a Derby mood.”
Ginny Keen of Louisville rode a motorized chair with the pink feather and pin-covered hat she’s been wearing for 39 years.
“Everybody smiles and everybody’s so happy,” Keen said. “You can go up and talk to anybody from any place you want.”
Skip Koepnick of Wyoming, Mich, is in his 14th year of hat-building. He said he also has one in the museum collection. He makes a different hat each year, although they all have his signature spinning model horses on top.
This was only the second Derby for Jan Baty of Traverse City, Mich., but she was making up for lost time.
Her straw hat was covered with huge silk flowers and topped off with a plastic pink flamingo plucked from her front yard.
“I’m having a grand time,” she said. “My grandkids are home going to watch it on television and I said, ‘Maybe grandma will be on TV.’
Middle photo: Ernie Trent of Louisville has been making crazy hats to wear to Derby for 32 years.
Bottom photo: Skip Koepnick of Wyoming, Mich., has been to 32 Derbies and has been making special hats for 14 of them.
MULTIMEDIA: To watch David Stephenson’s time-lapse photo report with audio about Charles “Derby Man” Matasich, click here.
