A Mushroom!

When I made the Etsy Store of Capiies I open it with only 2 hats. One was a black hat with a chain on the side and the other one was an orange–and–red tie–dye bucket hat with a red mushroom on it.

Those were my first steps into designing, managing a business, and making products. A lot of people like mushrooms–especially when they’re on a hat. It went well. It didn’t sell a lot, but it sold enough to encourage me and motivate me to try a different design.

The second mushroom design I released was a light blue hat with a different mushroom. I experimented with a new tie–dye technique to get a lighter color. Surprisingly, this one performed better than the previous design.

A funny story about that hat is that one of my friends saw it online an she didn’t know I had made it. That felt like a good sign to me because she genuinely liked it.

After releasing the first jellyfish bucket hat , I felt happy. People loved it, and it started getting attention on social media—not a huge amount, but much more than I expected. It was great. At the same time, it made me feel i hade to release something better. I had people’s attention, I was suddenly on their radar and wishlists.

I loved the idea of mushroom–inspired bucket hats. However, I always noticed an issue with most of the mushroom related bucket hats: either they had a lot of spots that ended up being cut in half, or they were plain hats with a single mushroom graphic on them. I wanted to create something I would personally want to wear.

Other types of design I saw a lot was the crochet ones and personally, i love them but I didn’t see myself crocheting large quantities of hats. Still, they had something I was looking for—full spots,, not cut in half, and not over design. So I decided to release something that mix both.

On October 27, 2023. I announced the new collection: Mushroom Madness. The plan was to release four different hats, each inspired by a different type of mushroom. The spots wrapped around the hat without being cut, and they varied in size. At the time, I thought it was a strong idea.

I sold a couple of them, it wasn’t a best seller but it wasn’t a total failure either. Still, it didn’t perform the way I expected, and that honestly brought me down a bit.

After I releasing the JellyfishJam hat—which received a lot of attention—I felt I have to be better on my designs. My next piece had to be something people would love and something I would be excited to wear. I decided give it one more chance to the mushroom design. This time only one hat and a new style. That’s how the Mushroom Hat was born.

This time I tried to make the design close to an actual amanita mushroom but keeping the cartoon ish style. Driving inspiration from the iconic red mushroom eaten by a certain plmber as if it was Popeyes with his spinach.

I continued my rule of keeping all spots intact—no halves, different sizes–and added a new detail: the inside of the hat has a color similar to a real mushroom. Another design choice I made was removing the stitches from the brim to make the hat less rigid.

Honestly, I loved it. To me, it perfectly summarized my journey with mushroom hat designs and showed how far I had come. I created something I was genuinely happy to wear. It was different. Regardless of how it was received—whether it sold well or got a lot of views—I liked it, and that’s what matters most to me.

At the end of the day, I design to express myself and to prove to myself that I can create great things. Not every design needs to be a bestseller. Sometimes, it just needs to feel right.