Hats Off!

I'll eat chocolate at the drop of a hat.

If you make a mistake, you'll eat your hat, but if you do something well, it's a feather in your cap.

When you retire, you'll hang up your hat.

By now, with all of these hat-based idioms, you may have a bee in your bonnet.

* * *

The calendar is full of weird and fun holidays. Today happens to be National Hat Day!

I never used to wear hats, except on the coldest days of the year. Disease, hormones, medications, and genetics have caused hair loss. My hair has never been thick and luxurious, but now there is much less of it. So I have reinvented my style and I've started wearing hats.

Up until recent decades, women wore hats for everyday flair. Women in the nineteen-oughts wore wide-brimmed straw hats called Gibson Girls. Sometimes they had feathers or fake birds. In the next decade, they wore felt hats and turbans with tulle. During the Roaring Twenties, flapper dresses were perfect for the bell-shaped cloche hats. I love this style and own two!

During the Depression, retailers sold hats and matching gloves. The hats were made of felt and tipped elegantly over one eye, as per Greta Garbo.

Hats changed dramatically during WWII. Hat makers offered Victory Winged Turbans and Commando Caps.

Times were changing during the decade after WWII, and women wore hats only for very formal occasions, weddings and the like.

Remember the 60s? Jackie Kennedy made pill box hats famous. I don't like the pill box shape, but women in the 60s looked elegant, didn't they?

The 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond have seen the decline of women's hats. Let's change that. Let's make hats fashionable again!