The recent Royal Wedding got me thinking about hats. I concluded that people have forgotten how to wear them.
When I was a very small girl, most people – men and women - still wore hats on a daily basis. Somewhere along the way this has changed. It is strange when you think about it. Hats or headdresses of some kind, both decorative and utilitarian, have been a vital part of an ensemble throughout most of human history. Hats were of course functional, keeping the head warm, the sun off the skull, and one’s hair clean, but they were also important symbols of social status and job function. Additionally, they encouraged (or discouraged) sexual attraction. In fact, all these things still apply, but to a much lesser degree than in even the recent past.
At some point toward the end of the 19th century it was no longer thought necessary that a woman wear a cap or headdress indoors. However, a woman’s outdoor attire was not complete without a hat, even well into the 20th century. The hat was the go-to accessory to put the last touches on one’s costume, much the way shoes and bag are today. This began to decline noticeably after World War II, but accelerated in the mid-1960’s. In the early 1950’s, my mother wore a hat whenever she went shopping or visiting. The most memorable for me is the one my brother and I sniggeringly called “Mom’s witch hat” – a conical black faille number that she made from a mid to late-1940’s pattern. She also wore simple pill boxes with suits and dresses. I can’t say any of them were particularly elegant or noteworthy. Mom favored simple, tailored garments with little embellishment. But the hat said, “I am properly dressed. I am respectable.”
One day about 1957 or so I was trolling through the rag bag, and came upon a most enchanting hat. It was a little dark blue straw cap with dark blue veiling and a few crushed pink velvet flowers. When, I asked my mother, would I be able to wear a hat like this? “When you’re a grown up lady,” I was told. Alas. By the time I was “old enough” to wear such a thing, no one my age wore any hats at all, let alone something as feminine, elegant, and alluring as that hat.
We wore hats to church. Mom crocheted berets, and I got stuck wearing the damn things when I was deemed too old for the nylon straw boater with artificial flowers. There were prettier alternatives, of course, but no – it was wear the hated white crocheted beret and white cotton gloves. One was supposed to wear something on one’s head in church. I was taught that this was decided by one of the 4th century ecumenical councils, probably derived from the opinions of St. Paul, who was rather hard on the female sex. Whatever the reason, the female head must be covered in church. In lieu of a hat, a circlet of lace, a headband, even a hankie atop one’s head was acceptable. It was an early lesson in the importance of symbolism, and in the progressive abstraction of a garment no longer fulfilling its original function. It was also pretty damn silly.
Back to the Royal Wedding. You couldn’t avoid it. I swore I wouldn’t watch, and yet there I was, and enjoying it, too. And, like everyone else, I was mesmerized by The Hats.
Now, Americans believe that The British Wear Hats. Actually, I doubt they wear them any more than we do – it’s just that they have these events, like Ascot or royal weddings, which seem to demand a hat as a ticket, or a badge of some kind. The hats I saw were not simply “hats” – they appeared to be entrance requirements. “It’s royal, so we have to wear strange things on our heads.” With the exception of the Queen, who always gives good hat, most people appeared decidedly self-conscious, as if they knew they looked ridiculous, and couldn’t wait to go home and get those dreadful things off their heads. Many hats resembled satellite dishes – perhaps their wearers relieved the tedium of the event by listening to XM radio, or they may have even had a tiny TV screen concealed inside. It must have been downright painful to sit next to some of those things, not to mention difficult to see what was going on. Even the fascinators, though generally smaller than the hats, were worn with a self-conscious air, and bore little or no relation to the outfits on the bodies beneath.
Of course, the prize for bizarre had to go to that Thing on Princess Beatrice’s head. I thought it looked like an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, but a commentator referred to it a toilet seat. Did she and her sister set out to embarrass the family because their mother was not invited?
I found the peculiar hats so distracting, that they seemed to me almost disrespectful, as if the wearers were making fun of the event. Is a wedding, even one featuring the future King of England, the place for sartorial irony?
A hundred years ago, when hats were vast and ornate, no chapeaux, however elaborate, would have looked out of place, because their wearers knew how to wear hats. We appear to have forgotten.
