I envy women who can wear hats for I fall into the category of hats that wear women. You know the kind I mean - the type you shake your head at and say to yourself, that is so not working for her. Since childhood hats have held a strange fascination for me. I remember my mother’s closet shelf stacked high with elegant, glossy round boxes of hats. She bought more each year but seldom discarded any. Sometimes I would haul all the boxes out of her closet and try on her collection. But the hats always wore me and I knew it.
I love hats. I love watching someone with flair and style completely as ease when wearing a hat. Much like jewelry, I don't have the panache or style to carry off the wearing of hats. I discovered this at a very early age all those years ago and have lived with that knowledge ever since.
I've been helping my sister with a family genealogy project these past few weeks and in that process pouring over lots of old family photographs. I became enchanted with all the pictures of hats through the last century and how the women and men in my family wore them with style and grace.
There is a picture of my maternal grandmother at the very early part of the last century in an enormous picture hat with feathers and flowers pouring over the wide brim while she is wrapped in furs with a huge muff on her lap hiding the evidence of my mother's impending birth.
There is a picture of my paternal grandmother taken very close to the same time period, in a black suit with a no-nonsense black hat. That picture was printed on a postcard to give to her family when she left the shores of Norway for the last time to settle in this country. Her delicate handwriting in a language I cannot read but effected me still.
There is a picture of my Aunt Syl in the early twenties of the last century in a asymmetrical hat that looks like the representation of a bird wing. The hat is a sharp contrast to the sort of practical woman she was, but I see a bit of a twinkle in her eye as if to say this is who I am on the inside - you just don't know it.
My mother's High School graduation picture in 1930 has her posing in a fetching manner with a cloche with spit-curls on her forehead. There she was all sass and style with a look that says I dare you.
The early married pictures of my mother and father show him in a wide brim fedora that was his favorite style. He wore them faithfully and cared for each one in a loving manner. He was a tall, good-looking man who took pride in his appearance.
I remember the days when there were actual hat shops. Stores devoted to the making and selling of hats. I remember going along on shopping expeditions with my mothers that included buying an outfit, going somewhere else for shoes and a purse and then on to the hat shop for the crowning touch to the ensemble. There was a definite order to creating a 'look'. My mother often sent her dressmaker to the movies to scope out a look that she had seen on an actress. She and the dress maker would then get together to select fabric. when the dress or suit was complete she went into high shopping mode to complete the ensemble.
This was not shopping for the faint of heart. Large department stores had not completely cornered the market as the charm and aura in the tiny shops and downtown shopping where the proprietors knew you, your tastes and at times a good deal of details about your life. These early forays into commerce are tinged with nostalgia in my mind these days. My mother depended a good deal on these ladies of retail for shopping advice. They had her number in more ways than one and would call to inform her if they thought an outfit or accessory they had specially put aside for her approval would enrich her wardrobe.
After a fitting she would set out with a swatch of material and a sketch of her outfit and stop first for just the right shoes and of course, matching handbag. Gloves were chosen and then onto the hat shop for the final piece de resistance. She was in her element; her comfort zone if you will.
When we moved out of state and into a city, she was at a loss to adapt to a different way for many years. She continued to do most of her shopping when chance would have it that a trip back to her former town could be arranged. Eventually, she did begin to shop the city stores, but she lamented bitterly the way things were in her past.
Today this level of service is probably extended to the very top tier of consumers, but there was a time when the average middle-class person enjoyed this type of service and the additional bonus of having all packages delivered to your home free of charge. In the world before Wal-mart these things really did happen, youngsters.
Both my parents had worthy selections of hats throughout their lives. My childhood collection was composed of the yearly Easter hat of the 50's. Mostly the Mamie Eisenhower-type that clamped over the top of your head from ear to ear and gave you a searing headache in nothing flat.
My mother's hats were often crammed and stacked on top of each other in her closet. Overflowing the hat boxes that she did have. And much like the platform shoes twenty years out-of-style that took up space and were never worn, the hat collection became a representation of styles gone by. When I was little girl I was given some old, less favored hats for my adventures in playing dress-up.
Since matching was de rigueur in those days, every outfit had a full compliment of accessories. Shoes, purses, gloves, hats, jewelry all had to work together. Fashion rules were strict and merciless. However, the set of minks that clamped onto each other's tails that she worn around her shoulders for years, always struck me as some sort of arcane and bizarre fashion statement. I used to play with them from time to time. Mostly un-clamping their jaws from the hind end of the mink in front of them and petting their soft fur. I was both fascinated and horrified by their beady glass eyes and the little claws on their paws. I don't remember what happened to this charming fashion statement when my mother died, but I don't think anyone in the family wanted to claim them.
My father began to lose his hair in his twenties. By thirty he had what we refer to in our family as 'dueling cul de sacs'. Hats where as vital to men's fashion as they were to women's fashion. A man simply wasn't dressed outside the house without his hat. My Dad wore hats quite well, especially the wide-brimmed Fedoras of so long ago. Much like you read about in the story 'Shoes' he cared for his hats with meticulous precision. Styles did not change rapidly for men, so a good hat could last for years with care. He brushed them regularly, had them cleaned and blocked and rotated and stored them with reverence. None ever resided on a hook or were tossed casually on a piece of furniture.
I remember him walking out the door to go to work and the last thing he did was place his hat upon his head as he opened the door. Sometimes when he came in the door from work he didn't have it on as the day had been long and perhaps the car too hot, but he always went out the door with it on his head.
In summer he would take his 'straw boater' out of its box for wearing on the 'dog days' of summer. They were waning in popularity by then and I often expected him to break out in some hokey song, why I don't know, as I don't think I ever heard him sing a single note in his life. But he could whistle up a storm from time to time while he worked in his shop with the radio going.
When the narrow-brimmed Frank Sinatra style of fedoras came in during the fifties he invested heavily in the new trend. I never cared for them. They somehow didn't look right on him after all those years of elegant fedoras.
By the time I reach adulthood, hats were all but gone. The pie-pan hats with the froth of netting in the front that was so ubiquitous during the Eisenhower years gave way to the more elegant styles of pillboxes favored by Jacqueline Kennedy. For a time hats came back into style as so many women emulated everything she did in fashion. I always felt that hats were laid to rest with Jackie Kennedy's sorrow when she buried JFK.
The long flowing tresses on men and women in the latter sixties spelled the virtual end to millinery business as it had been known. Hair was to be shown off, free and flowing, not confined or hidden under hats. What hats there were became very individual and a good many were handmade by the wearer. Fashion statements were all over the map from then on, but hats never really made a comeback.
In my early forties I indulged in a couple of plain picture hats. One was dark navy blue and one was black. For a time my hair was short and I had dyed it to hide the encroaching grey. I grew tired of the regimen and the expense of the required maintenance and decided to let my hair grow out. This was about the time my first grandchild was born. I was in the middle of this outgrowth period when it was time for her christening ceremony. It was one of the very few times I ever looked fetching in a hat and I love the pictures that were taken that day. I kept my hat on throughout that day from the ceremony to the picnic in the backyard on a sultry August afternoon. Soon my hair grew out and the hats became property of my granddaughter for her immersion into the world of dress-up play.
There is one other picture of me in a hat. I decided for my birthday one year to have a full-blown tea party at a lovely tea shop nearby. I invited all my female writing friends with the request that they dress-up and wear a hat to the party. The array was unique and varied as some of them had gone to thrift shops to find period hats. The staff at the tea shop was charmed by our sense of fun and took photographs of the entire group in the lovely upstairs dinning room that we had all to ourselves that day. We all had brought our own cameras to snap pictures of each other as well. As I was sitting at the head of the table listening with rapt attention to the person next to me someone called my name. I was sitting there with my chin in the cup of my hand, which I often do, and as I moved my eyes in the direction of the caller she snapped the picture. I'm completely relaxed and very much enjoying the moment. The picture captured all that framed by a wide-brimmed hat.
These days the only time I wear a hat is if I work in the garden. The Colorado sun is brutal on aging fair skin, so I putter about my yard in my wide-brimmed straw hat, big dark glasses and a holster for my pruners and assorted garden gear strapped around my ample hips.
I don't own a single dress-up hat anymore, but I may have to remedy that soon. I have a darling soon-to-be-three granddaughter who adores hats, and shoes, and jewelry. She has been well topped, shod and adorned since birth by her indulgent grandmother and her whimsical Auntie Jen, my daughter. She has more panache and style in her three foot frame than I could ever dream about. She will wear hats and not ever the other way around.
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ANNOUNCEMENT
Next week I will be taking some time off to enjoy a few days with that darling granddaughter I mentioned above. I have someone who will come in and take this spot to tell you a story next Friday evening. Look for a new series that will be dedicated to solo storytellers called: STORYTIME PRESENTS. Please give her a warm welcome when you see her.
If you would like to tell a story sometime, please write me at: cronesense AT aol DOT com. with an idea that you have or a story you have already written. It has always been my intention to 'grow' STORYTIME beyond just my voice. There are many fine storytellers lurking here at dKos. Here is your chance to find a built-in audience of story-lovers and try your wings.