July 22nd 2025
UK Country Hat Bar
Julie Barber & Nikki Blackburn
There’s something pretty magical about watching a plain cowboy hat transform into a one-of-a-kind statement piece, stitched with personality and charm. And if you’ve ever dreamt of designing your own, the UK Country Hat Bar is the place to do it. Nestled in the heart of the British countryside—but with the soul of the American West—this UK-based brand has built a buzzworthy name for itself through its bespoke hat designs, standout pop-ups, and hands-on customisation workshops that blend creativity and community with cowboy flair.
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We caught up with the heart and hat-loving soul behind it all, Emma, just after their biggest ever (as yet) custom hat workshop at the brand new Rodeos Birmingham venue. Surrounded by feathers, hat bands, branding irons, and a whole lot of happy customers, we chatted about how a love of Western fashion sparked a homegrown hat movement, the stories behind some of her most memorable creations, and why country style is finding a firm home here in the UK—one hat bar at a time.
Emma - UK Country Founder
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You were telling us earlier that your business started pretty organically – can you talk a little more on how UK Country Hats came to be?
So I've always been into country ever since I was younger and I found out that my dad was from Texas. Unfortunately, I did lose him at a young age - which, you know, it happens and it's fine – but I feel like I love country because it's in my blood and that’s quite a special thing to me. So, 10 years ago, country wasn't as big as it is now, so I never really wanted to dress Western because it wasn't a thing. But then all of a sudden, I thought to myself, I had my daughter five years ago and from having her, I was just in a phase where I was like, you know what, I don't actually care what people think of me. So I did decide to dress more western and be myself. And then I lost my job through COVID - the whole company went bust - so I was a stay- at home-mum. And then I was going to a gig and I wanted my own cowboy hat, but to get one into the UK is extortionate prices. So I decided to make my own.
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So just for you to wear at shows?
Yeah, just doing it as a hobby. Then my friends really liked it, my family loved what I was doing, so I was kind of making hats for friends and family, and then I put it all on my personal social media page and it just went wild and ended up going from making some here and there to literally every night sitting in my living room making somebody a hat. So I thought, you know what I'm going to open this as a business. And it's just been flying and then I thought, I love making hats. I'm sure everyone else going to as well. So I thought doing workshops would be a perfect opportunity for people to do that, but not just that, but just bring everyone as a community where at the time when I started, country was such a small community. I wanted to have people come and join in, whether they are a person that just loves it by themselves, or they're with a group of people and just wanted to bring everyone together to enjoy the full experience and make new friends.
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And from there you’ve grown to festivals and doing promo for Paramount.
Yeah, we started doing the festivals, and then we worked with Paramount Plus on a promotion for the new Yellowstone.
Could you believe that?
I was over the moon. When they contacted me, I actually cried because I felt like I was a nobody and the fact that someone like that had noticed me was just incredible. So it really made me push my dream even more. Then we worked with Peter Crouch and Abbey Clancy and they are just incredible. They are the kindest people. They’re hilarious and they're just the nicest people ever. And I think that working with them; being on their YouTube channel, that's really open doors for us as well. And we can't thank the venues that we work with enough either because Simon (owner of Rodeos) was actually our second venue we came to and he's helped us from the beginning. He's really like, sung our praises, his venues are just incredible.
Abbey Clancy & Peter Crouch
He's sung your praises all day as well, he’s just so grateful to you too – it’s lovely to see.
Yeah, we're just all this massive community that help each other. And we love Simon - he's just the kindest person you could ever imagine.
Where do you see the business going in the next year or two?
I just want to be bigger. I want to help more people. I want to eventually venture out of the UK and we've already had people ask when we’ll come to Canada, so we would love to do a workshop.
I used to live in Canada and country music is huge there, particularly British Columbia where I was.
Yeah, they also have amazing festivals over there as well and it's just insane. I was talking to a couple of people who are live in Canada and they were like, we have cowboy hats, but we have nothing like this here where you can come and create your own.
And you’ve created this from nothing – you must be so proud.
Honestly, I’m still in shock for myself. Like, if I can give anyone any advice on how to start a business, just start with your passion and make it work, because you can learn the lessons as you go; we have changed so much from the beginning to now.
And it looks like you guys all just have so much fun – the vibe here has been incredible all day.
We love it. The girls all love it, and we do just have fun.
You can see you guys are such a tight group.
Yeah, that's the spirit of it. We just want to get everybody involved, honestly, I love all my girls to pieces. Some of them are family, some of them are friends, some of them are newbies that we brought in, like Liv who came and did a workshop before, and now she’s part of the family. Honestly, I wouldn't change any of them for the world and I couldn't do this without them. And I try to remind them of that all the time, that I couldn't do this being one person on my own so the support that they give me is unreal.
If someone had said to you, 18 months ago, you're going to be working with Paramount. You're going to be talking to Peter and Abby Crouch. You're going to holding your biggest workshop to date in the opening week of a new, incredible venue, what would you have said?
I’d be like, no, that's not me. Like, I'm a mum, I've got a five-year-old, I suffer with anxiety; I couldn't talk to that many people and you know, I really did just push myself out of my comfort zone there because I want to be something more. I want to build a life for my family as well. So yeah, I just pushed myself to do it and I honestly think if you just push yourself, you can achieve anything.
It's interesting that you said about you yourself having anxiety because I think something like this where you can just switch off and you don’t have to think about anything other than creating your hat does so much good for your mental well-being. Because you can't overthink because you're just so purely in the moment.
And that is honestly what’s helped with my anxiety is sitting at home creating a hat because I forget about everything else that's going on. And I think I've improved massively; to the point that I can stand there and talk to 35 people.
If you were nervous, nobody would have known it.
Or I'm just really good at hiding it. But we're forever changing; we started from having eight people at a work trip to 15 to then 20 and now we're at 38 at this one, which is our biggest yet, so we now have to think about how we case up the 38 people and just expand ourselves for bringing new things.
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I think what we noticed watching it – Nikki and I had a chat about it - was how much attention you gave every person, despite being as busy as you were, how special you made each person feel because you were sat down here with a chap sewing with him and the girls were sat with different people and talking them through how to do it best. I think you must have made everybody feel like it was their workshop.
Yeah, so we love to make people feel welcome. Like, people look at us - and sometimes when people see a group of girls, they think, that’s intimidating - but we are probably the most friendly, most welcoming people you will ever meet and we will go around and if we thank your hat looks incredible, we’ll tell you your hat looks incredible and we will make you feel comfortable and make you even feel like part of a family.
Hit the links below to keep up with UK Country or to book on to a workshop:
You can see it. Like Julie said, you and your team were going along and chatting to everyone about their creative choices or their styles and complimenting them and you could see them buzzing as you or your team walked away.
We even had a couple here and the lady was like: I love what you guys do. I wish I could do this for a living. And I said, well, why don't you? I'm always looking for people to help me. And I was like, we're heading into the festival season at the moment, so I've closed off kind of interviewing people and getting them involved just while we're going through the festival season. But I said, after then, I'll put another post out for people who want to get involved and, you know, it's nice to see different faces and everyone brings their own unique thing to UK Country. So I told them to get involved and get in contact.
The UK Country Girls
They should because what you’re building here is incredible, honestly. I mean, how many times have I told you that I love what you do but I’m more into baseball caps, but having been here and seeing a workshop up close from start to finish, I just wanted to be part of it because the atmosphere you guys create is genuinely infectious and so lovely.
That's also why we like doing it like this when venues are open generally because, one people don't understand that we do sometimes and we want people to come over. Like, people will pop over and we’ll be like: do you want to come and have a look? And then we'll explain what we're doing, even though we're in the middle of a workshop, because we want everyone to feel involved.
Mr UK Country ...also answers to Nathan
And you’ve really caught on to something at the right time with how big country has grown and still growing; people want authentic, quality cowboy hats and they don't even do this kind of customisation in Nashville.
Exactly.
I could see you guys with a stall at Fan Fair X at CMA Fest doing this and it’d go down a storm. How are they not doing this in Nashville?
I know, right! Honestly, we hear that all the time. We actually get loads of Army, mostly American Army men, that come and join in and we love it - they're so funny - and they all say the same, like it just doesn't happen over there.
I've never seen anything like this before you guys.
Franchise it!
I know! I really, really want to. But I want to make sure that we're perfect and we get everything running perfectly, so that if we do franchise it, if we do grow the team and then split the teams off, that we are all seeing from the same hymn sheet, giving the same experience, even if it's two different teams.
Totally, because you need to make sure everybody's got a little bit of you in there and why you started it.
And the same passion. I see that passion in all of the girls that I work with. So when I do bring new people in, as long as they have that same passion and a real love for country, that's pretty much good enough for me.
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Where's it going next?
Oh, to be honest, I have so many visions. So I think my next step will either be to have two teams so that we can do multiple events because we're booked up now til November with only two weeks at the end of November and I think a couple of the weeks in December that we've got off. And so it would be really nice to grow the team to be able to either give the team a bit of a break and kind of filter them around. And then eventually we can also do more events; so we can split off and one team can do festivals. Some of us can do workshops. Then I really want to go on tour around the whole of the UK. I've been talking about it for a while. We've had so much interest from Scotland but I have to try and make it cost effective because if we head straight to Scotland, our ticket prices are going to be through the roof. And like I said, we try to cater for everyone, so if we can arrange potentially next year for us to go up one side of England, hitting multiple different locations. and then come down the other side again.
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How are you feeling now? You’ve just finished your biggest workshop today – all 38 people left here absolutely buzzing – we were joking earlier about how many people are gonna be wandering around Birmingham wearing your hats this afternoon.
Honestly, I’m speechless – I have no words to express how I feel about the whole situation. I am just so grateful for everyone. For believing in me, for everyone who’s helped me or is part of my team, and everyone who’s been and done a workshop or wants to come and do a workshop. I love it and I am proud of myself, but I’m more proud of my team than I am myself. They’re as much UK Country as I am and we’re gonna have a great night tonight to celebrate together.