The "Hats by Felicity" catwalked on Sunday in an emerging designers' show at New York. It wowed the audience, but it also boosted Australian milliner Felicity Brown's image and reputation, which she hopes will give her the opportunity to design some great headpieces for movies.

After the energising episode at New York, she will return to her full-time job in Australia, yet she is setting sights on her future. "I don't have a burning desire to open up 16,000 shops around the world, I don't even want a ­single member of staff," she said, according to Australian.com. All she wants is some creative work opportunities, such as making some great bits of work, perhaps.

Last year, in February, 2013, she was diagnosed with melanoma. It may not have been the trigger for this show at New York Fashion Week. Yet, it stoked her interest in millinery further. There were two surgeries on her arm, the second one preventing her from driving to the field as a project ­officer with the Department of Agriculture and Food. So she began to plan a trip to the U.S., based on last year's New York Fashion Week, unaware that it was not possible to buy tickets for the show. She had made it to New York, but not to the programme.

It was a few chance meetings with hotel concierges that threw some invites her way. Flic met the organiser, who was managing the programme for newer designers. Within two weeks she not only got an invite for the September 2014 show but also to exhibit her 2015 Spring and Summer collection!

It thrilled her. "Usually when you travel you have a few quirky things go wrong, but I had everything go better than right,'' she said to Australian.com. She is convinced that fate had a hand in the strange coordination of events. She is even rather grateful for the melanoma diagnosis. "And if the melanoma hadn't happened then none of this would have happened," she added.

Read her blog, called Flic's Milliner on the Move, that has covered her interesting adventures.

She had started millinery due to lack of options. In the 1990s, she noted that people were always attending the races. As there was no internet during her days, she would just absorb and alter the available designs on everyone's hats in her mind. She moved into Broome in 1995, and started her work, creating a lot of hats for all her friends and family members. Her hats are interesting, using local materials, such as pearls and feathers. The "RM Williams" magazine had done a story on her. Since then she was pleasantly surprised to keep getting feathers.

A few days before she left for New York, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop came in with a quick offer commission for the Broome Cup. To fund her trip from Broome in Western Australia to New York for her Sunday show, her little village collected funds. After that, Flic has not looked back, as she is now wearing a different hat for every occasion, and trying to project her designs to a world that is driven by fashion. Someday, she hopes to pursue the kind of projects she wants.