Hat-making is serious business.

Not only has Madam Mandy Pan, 49, poured thousands of dollars into buying wooden hat blocks and fabric, she foregoes sleep to keep an eye on eBay auctions for materials.

Out of the 30 wooden hat blocks (moulds that resemble the shape of a human head) she owns, the most expensive one cost about $500, admits the teacher.

Madam Pan's love affair with hats began six years ago, when she was living in Perth, Australia, where her husband was based for work.

"We used to go to the races and I would be fascinated with the beautiful hats the women wore," the mother of a teenage daughter says.

She stumbled across the blog of a Hong Kong native who was learning how to make hats, and wrote to her.

"I expressed interest in what she was pursuing, and she encouraged me to take up a course," she says.

She was determined to learn only from the best and approached Mrs Rose Cory, a British milliner who made hats for the Queen and the royal family.

"I enrolled myself in her millinery school in 2009, and spent two weeks in London picking up basic skills."

When she returned to Singapore, she began making simple pillbox hats. During the weekend, the living room of her three-room flat in Ang Mo Kio transforms into her personal workshop, littered with hat-making bits and bobs.

These days, her customers order hats from her website for between $50 and $200 apiece.

She has even made a leopard print fur hat for her idol, Korean actor Jang Geun Suk, who starred in popular drama serial You're Beautiful.

"I'm looking forward to sending it to him," she says with a big grin.

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