We caught up with the 24-year-old Philadelphia Etsy designer behind Beyoncé's viral disco cowboy hat

It turns out that a viral disco ball-style cowboy hat that Beyoncé wore in her Rennaisance tour announcement has local roots.

A photo announcing the tour dates, including a Philly show at Lincoln Financial Field, was posted featuring a photo of Queen Bey clad in a mirror-tiled cowboy hat and matching outfit as she rides a sparkly disco horse.

But while most fans who saw the photo were freaking out about the tour, Abby Misbin and her friends were focused on the singer’s outfit.

Misbin, 24, of Fairmount, is the owner of Trending by Abby, a cowboy hat decorating Etsy shop that has gained a customer base in outfitting bachelorette parties, birthday bashes and college football tailgates. It was her hat that donned Beyoncé's head.

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In early June, Misbin said Bea Åkerlund — one of Beyoncé's stylists — contacted her on Etsy to purchase one of her top sellers: a cowboy hat covered in mirror tiles. It would be a quick turnaround, but Åkerlund said it was for Bey herself.

“It didn’t sound real to me at first,” Misbin told The Inquirer during a phone interview Sunday, which she took while working on fulfilling hat orders. “I figured it was a scam, but I got paid so there wasn’t a risk. She was very specific about what she wanted the hat to look like. I offer crystal trim and lights. They didn’t want any of that — they had a vision.”

Months had gone by and although Misbin and her friends and family knew she had maybe, possibly, outfitted Beyoncé, it wasn’t clear whether the rest of the world would ever find out.

In August, the music video teaser for Beyoncé's song “I’m That Girl” dropped. It featured a short snippet of Bey wearing Misbin’s creation. The only problem? No one knew Misbin was responsible.

“I don’t think people believed me,” she recalled. “I had to tell them it was mine.”

Cut to last week, when Misbin woke up to a swarm of messages from a group chat with her friends. There it was: Beyoncé was wearing the hat prominently in her major tour announcement, which was shared across all major social media platforms. The photo has been liked more than eight million times on Instagram alone.

Still, Misbin felt a case of “Deja Vu.” She worried that people wouldn’t believe it was her hat atop the queen’s head because she wasn’t tagged.

So she and her friends sought out the BeyHive — Beyoncé's ride-or-die fan group — to let them know the source of the singer’s disco cowboy crown.

The plan worked. Not only was Misbin getting credit, she was making dozens of sales.

Misbin, who said she’s always enjoyed crafting hobbies, launched Trending by Abby in 2020 as a side hustle while pursuing a marketing degree at Temple University.

Her first sale was a $40 hat that the customer ended up returning. “It’s funny to look back on now,” she said. “Thankfully, I don’t have many returns these days.”

The business picked up slowly with custom orders for the colorful, campy, over-the-top cowboy hats.

“All customers deserve Beyoncè quality.”

After graduating in 2021, Misbin went full time with hat decorating. Even before the Beyoncé boom, Misbin said, she made enough from hat decorating to sustain herself.

“The business has been surprisingly lucrative,” she said. “I have a lot of loyal customers. It started off slow but has really grown.”

Misbin said she doesn’t have to put her marketing degree to use, either. She has enough organic and returning clientele that she doesn’t need to pay for marketing or worry about maintaining her business’ social media presence.

“Before Beyoncé, I had people buying a ton of disco hats,” she said. “It was my top seller.”

Once word got out that Misbin was responsible for Beyoncé's hat, the orders came rolling in. But they’re not exactly a quick item to produce.

Each hat, priced at a base of $285 — or more depending on add-ons — is covered in thousands of individually placed glass mirror tiles. The whole process takes six to seven hours to complete. Misbin said she can make, at most, 2½ a day.

“I sold 60 or 70 the first day Beyoncé's tour announcement happened and I realized pretty quickly that if I don’t stop this, people aren’t going to get them,” she said. She likened this week of orders to the surges in orders she experiences in October ahead of Halloween season. But with orders being completely customized, Misbin said she can’t begin crafting a hat until it’s ordered.

Every so often, Misbin opens a handful of orders again in the days since.

After Good Morning America ran a feature on Misbin’s hats, she opened up 15 more order slots. They sold out in 20 minutes.

She’s also made some exceptions for customers with extenuating circumstances — such as a Super Bowl appearance.

“One girl offered to pay me three times the price if I could send her a hat tomorrow morning because she’s going to be at the Super Bowl and will be on or near the 50-yard line.” Another customer — the personal assistant of a celebrity whose daughter is a Beyoncé fan — reached out to order a hat on their behalf as a present. “Some people have such good stories, I can’t say no.”

So instead of saying no, she’s working 14 to 16 hours a day, fulfilling orders from her parents’ basement in Ambler. She calls the space “the hat bunker.”

“My parents think this is nuts, but they also think it’s nuts when they see the big rushes of hats and 20 boxes outside their front door,” she said. “They’ve gotten more used to it, but the Beyoncé thing is crazy.”

Still, as things go on social media, Misbin has also fallen subject to internet trolls and criticism.

Across social media, some people criticized Misbin for not being prepared to sell larger batches of hats once the Beyoncé announcement took off.

“I recently saw a ton of comments, because TMZ ran a story with a headline that said I was ‘forced to shut down sales.’ I’m still making hats and selling them,” she said. “But I can only make as many as I can.”

After that, Misbin read comments from people saying that she “dropped the ball” and is losing out on potential money from additional sales. “It really annoyed me,” she said.

One TikTok content creator called Misbin a “bag fumbler” because she didn’t scale up her production.

“[They criticized me] because I wasn’t ready to outsource or take out a loan to open a factory,” she said. “But I don’t want to do that because I like making the hats. The whole reason I started this was because I like working with my hands. The misconception is I’m too stressed to do it and that’s the opposite of the case.”

The hat designer also said that she isn’t willing to sacrifice quality just to make things faster or cheaper.

She said some customers purchased hats from her after first purchasing lower-quality, cheaper dupes. Misbin said the lower-quality hats can also be risky because disco mirror tiles are made out of glass. On her Instagram, she put it simply: “All customers deserve Beyoncè quality.”

Supporters of Misbin’s business say they appreciate her approachability and the fact that she cares so much about the product. Misbin’s own TikTok response to critics garnered more than 1.5 million views on the platform.

Misbin said she has recruited the help of friends for back-end work, such as folding boxes, launching a newsletter to announce when sales open, and cutting up mirror tiles. But she reserves the hat-making duties for herself.

Even though she’s tired, she says, the last week has been rewarding.

“I appreciate people who are willing to believe in me, and wait for their order, and understand that this is a labor of love for me,” she said. “Even if some big company takes the idea and mass produces this, I’m having a good time.”