September 15th was National Felt Hat Day. We postponed our post to say happy birthday to Agatha Christie, but it was a fun post so we wanted to tackle the subject a week late.
Some people can pull off hats and look great in them. I actually love hats, but my characters don’t wear them much. Wickeds, do your characters wear hats and if so, what’s their favorite style of hat? Do you wear hats?
Jessie: Liz, this topic is one of my favorites! I adore wearing hats and do so almost daily. Felt, straw, knitted, I love them all! My sleuth, Edwina Davenport is just as smitten with hats as I. She can even be persuaded by her fellow sleuth, Beryl Helliwell, to launch herself into new experiences if they might justify purchasing a new hat!
Edith/Maddie: I like the thought of wearing hats, but most are too tight on my extra-large head (trust me on this), and my head always gets hot even when I find one that fits. It has to be really cold and windy out to find me in a topper. None of my protagonists seem to have my hat issues, thank goodness. Rose Carroll wears a Quaker bonnet when she goes out. And I can vouch for how good Jessie looks in a wide-brimmed hat!
Julie: Edith, I also have an extra large head. When I was in college I wore fedoras. It was the 80s and they were in style. In remembering that, I think I should start to do that again. I loved them. And since they were men’s hats, they fit. I’d love to wear a cloche that looked good and fit–hard to find. As for my characters–Lilly wears a hat while gardening and walking. She’s fond of big straw hats, some with scarves to keep them on her head.
Barb: In the late sixties I had a big, floppy, red felt hat, when such things were fashionable. Alas no photos exist. Now I only wear hats, grudgingly, to keep the sun off my very sunburnable face. Hats, however, always put me in mind of my grandmother, Eleonore Kimbel Taylor Ross, who was a millinery buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue throughout her career, from the 1930s until she retired in the early 1960s.
Here’s my grandmother in quite a felt hat in an ad for Raybestos Brakes painted by Norman Rockwell (1922).
Liz: Love this, Barb! And Jessie, I knew your fondness for hats so I definitely wanted to tackle this topic. I love hats – I have a few fun ones and I’m currently on the hunt for some fun new ones. I love fedoras, and slouchy hats in the winter, and I have a wide-brimmed beachy hat that makes me feel like a movie star when I wear it that is a treasured gift from a friend. I also usually wear some kind of hat walking the doggies in the morning. Makes me feel much more presentable than I usually am at that hour!
Sherry: Barb you seemed to have an endlessly supply of fascinating relatives! I rarely wear hats unless it’s some knit thing stolen from my husband to wear on cold winter walks. My face is so square hats never seem to look good on me. I do have a floppy hat to keep the sun off my face, but don’t wear it often. Chloe might slap on a baseball cap now and then and Sarah something if she needed a disguise.
Readers, what about you? Love hats? What’s your favorite kind? Leave us a comment!
I have several felt hats that I wear in the winter to keep my head warm. Most have an attached scarf that ties under the chin to keep the hat in place when the wind blows.
Of course, I have my beloved felt cowboy hat that I used to wear (back in the days of horse shows and during the Urban Cowboy craze). I still have it and gladly bring it out at the hint of a western-themed party. I have a gorgeous wide-brimmed straw sun hat that I love but rarely wear because the slightest breeze catches it and makes me chase it across the yard. Then there are the ball caps for bad hair days and the ugly winter hats to keep my ears from freezing off December through February. Or March.
I used to love hats like nobody’s business. Strictly baseball caps, but a hat is a hat is a hat.
Whenever the teams I coached would win a championship, I bought hats for them. And I had plenty of my own.
These days, I don’t have nearly as many as I used to. And now, they are more for protection from the weather than any kind of “I HAVE TO WEAR A HAT” reason.
I also have my winter hats to keep my head from freezing. My Boston Celtics hat that I’ve had for decades, a couple of plain solid color non-descript kind of hats and I have a hat that advertises for the Blue Sun Corporation (the evil company from the TV show Firefly and the follow up movie Serenity. I’m still looking to find my own “Jayne’s Hat” from Firefly as well.
I love a summer straw fedora- a guaranteed way to sass up an outfit and shade my face!
I don’t really wear hats – except for the odd winter hat if it is really cold and I want to keep my ears warm. I just don’t have the head for them.
LOOOVE Vintage hats! My wife and I have collected ladies’ hats for over 40 years and have a collection of over 1,300 wearable felt-fabric-feather and straw hats from the 20’s to the 60’s.
Sadly, we need to sell them, since our kids have no interest. in them We want to sell the collection as a whole. Amazing hats, but they need to move on to another loving home:-)
I’ve never been into wearing hats or caps. I don’t think I look good in them and they drive me crazy because my hair won’t cooperate when I’ve got one on. It has to be really cold for me to even want to put one on in the winter because my fine textured hair flies away when I pull one off my head. The rest of the day my long hair stands straight out, looking like I’ve had the scare of my life!
I love this! Not that I wear a lot of hats. Sometimes in winter when it is very cold. Once in a while a straw hat in the summer. Ironically, I picked up a rain hat in a department store one day on a whim. It is now several years old and I make sure it is with me whenever there is a chance of a shower. Polka dot bucket rain hat I can wear coming out of a store, on the golf course, or on a walk! And it’s the only one that doesn’t give me that static look when I take it off!
I knew Jessie would love this topic. She looks so cute in all her crazy hats. I love hats and I look good in them, but I seldom wear one. They’re just another thing to deal with and I try to keep things simple. In winter, I wear a way too big hat I knitted many years ago. It’s ridiculous, but it is so warm. On a rare occasion I wear a straw sun hat. Oh, and I have what I call my jungle hat that I’ve had for over 30 years I affectionately say it has character. Beat up, but very practical.
I absolutely love hats! Instead of a veil I wore a hat when I got married. I have a problem with the one size fits all hats and that’s because they’re usually too big on my head. Before I was married, we had horses. I once rode in a parade and my sister showed horses. In a cowboy hat I wore a 6 7/8.
Vintage hats from the 1920’s, ’30’s and 40’s are my favorite kinds of hats. Every year for Easter, my mother airways bought us hats and what I remember is the pain of those hats that were bendable and always seemed to cut into my scalp. However, if I had been given one of Edwina’s soft felt hats to wear, I think I would have been delighted! My husband has several “Indiana Jones” hats that look really good on him. He would wear them walking to and from campus when he was teaching and the students could always recognize him even from a distance.
Because I burn easily, I have a collection of hats from baseball caps to a wide-brimmed cowgirl hat to crocheted straw hat with a floppy brim. I’m at the point in life where I don’t care what anyone else thinks of me. I wear what I want and if they don’t like my black western hat, or my floppy farm hat–too bad. I’m not fond of sunburns and like the shade my hats give me. Com to think of it, my one horse doesn’t like that farm had. She will pull it off my head and toss it away if I wear it in the pasture when feeding them. Wonder if it’s the feathers?
When I was a child, we had full Easter outfits: dress, purse, shoes, socks, and of course hats. I did continue through high school for special occasions to church, but not much since. Though I do wear baseball caps when fishing and Cuban hats when walking due to the sun burning me… I do have a few vintage hats form the 1920s including a Gloria Swanson cloche. Hats are cool though.
I am not a hat person. I probably should be wearing a hat the last few days on my trip, but I haven’t been. Was doing pretty well with it early on in the trip.