Victorian Fashion Plate Feathered Brim Womens Hat

In this interview, "Vintage Hats & Bonnets" author Sue Langley discusses hats from the Victorian era to the historic period of the flappers and across. Langley describes the differences between cloches, Gainsboroughs, bonnets, and boaters. She also delves into her collection of fashion plates, photos, and other hat-related ephemera. The second edition of Langley's book, published by Collector Books in 2009, is bachelor from Amazon.

When I was nigh 8 years old, I went up into my grandma'due south attic ane day and found a piddling bonnet and a red plaid dress in a trunk. It looked liked something I'd seen in history class. I took it right downward to grandma and asked her about it. She said, "That'south the wearing apparel your groovy aunt wore when Lincoln'south funeral train came through Syracuse."

So I called upwards the local Syracuse paper, and they confirmed that Lincoln's funeral train had indeed stopped in town, and stayed for about 15 minutes. They also said a little miracle had occurred: A white dove had flown downward from the rafters and landed on Lincoln's funeral car. It stayed there until the railroad train started to pull out of the station. People took this as a sign that the country was supposed to heal and get back together.

I was fascinated. My grandmother was a teacher then was my mother. They instilled in me a beloved of all things related to history. Of course, I picked that upwardly in a big manner as an adult. I haunted garage sales, flea markets, and auctions. The more I saw, the more the connexion between fashion and history touched me. Once I went to an auction in a little suburb near Syracuse and saw ii beautiful Civil War-era hats. The fabrics they used were so different. That became a puzzle that needed to be solved.

I learned that silk was used a lot, while fur and felt were mostly used for winter hats. Only the virtually popular material might accept been straw, peculiarly very fine leghorn straw for bonnets. In that location was too a coarser, whiter straw chosen scrap straw, used for picayune racy-looking hats. Ane of the nicest hats I've seen from the Civil War era is a very fine leghorn with a paper label. The newspaper characterization has a bunch of little bluish scrolls inside and the model name "Rosalind."

In addition to hats, I collect fashion plates and anything else related to hats. For example, I just picked up a piece of sheet music with a wheel girl on the front. She's wheeling downwardly the road, wearing an 1890 bloomer outfit and a perky little lid. And so I'll collect anything that pertains either to hats or menses clothing.

Collectors Weekly: What exactly are fashion plates?

Langley: They're fashion illustrations, hand-colored steel engravings, which provide a somewhat stylized or idealized view of ladies' fashions. My earliest hand-colored plates are from 1690, with gold and silverish tints. I likewise have some French plates from Marie Antoinette's era.

Fashion plates can be used to appointment clothing as well as hats. This French case is from around 1800.

I've been collecting them for more than 25 years. These days y'all can find them by going to Google and typing in "Godey'southward Lady's Book," which is one of the most famous lady's books with the hand-colored plates. I used to get them at antiques shows, specially antique vesture shows.

There are a lot of fabulous representations, especially when you become to the Art Deco plates in the teens upwardly into the 1930s. They had a special stenciling procedure. Soon after the turn of the century, the lines were changing from Fine art Nouveau and the erstwhile-fashioned fussy frilly stuff to a more modernistic look. They look like watercolors.

Quite a few Art Deco plates can be found in the latest edition of "Vintage Hats & Bonnets." I've too included some stellar vintage photographs from as far back as 1840. Those early ones are copies of daguerreotype photos. The volume as well has copies of tintypes and ambrotypes, equally well as later snapshots and portraits.

The photos show what people really wore, while the way plates provide the stylized version. Upwardly until the end of the 1960s, arcadian fashion plates and even photographs that you lot'd see in "Vogue" were actually pretty shut to what people actually wore. Only today, fifty-fifty in New York, you don't come across anyone who'southward dressed like the models in "Faddy."

I keep my photos in large books that are organized by decade, from nearly 1850 through the 1940s. I have a few photographs from the 1950s and '60s, simply that's not my specialty. I just bought a nice one from the 1890s. A woman is wearing a little fur piece around her neck—they sometimes called that a choker—and she's wearing a lid with an unabridged bird on top.

Collectors Weekly: Why did you decide to focus but on hats?

Langley: Well, I dearest them and take quite a few of them. I was writing a mag commodity, and a friend of mine put me in touch with her editor. So I sent in the article and a few clumsy photos I'd taken of some of the hats.

They wrote back and said, "Can you please go improve photographs and start developing this?" So I did. Every couple months I'd send in another affiliate. The book is more than 400-pages long, but information technology covers the 18th century through the 1960s. Information technology's fascinating to see how the vesture corresponds to the historical events. For case, during the War of 1812, hats adult little military-type features. It's interesting to encounter how fashion was influenced by events of the time.

Collectors Weekly: Do you have a favorite era?

Langley: I honey them all, but the 1920s are a favorite. I think November 1920 was the first time women could vote for president. Information technology'due south astonishing to think they'd been campaigning for the right to vote since Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, reminding him to "recollect the ladies."

In the 1930s, slouchy felt fedoras tied with grosgrain bows were all the rage among college co-eds.

The teens were incredible, besides. World War I caused tremendous changes in women'southward lives. More women took over the work of men to help out with the war effort. Paul Poiret in Paris designed radically unlike dress for women, including the first pants for women. He designed the pantaloon outfit. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Costume Institute did a bear witness on his designs. He was just a tremendous influence on manner. Some of his hats were out of this world. The prototypes for the 1920s cloche hats with deep crowns also emerged in the teens.

In the '20s, yous come across the trivial cloches with very deep crowns, nearly to the eyebrows. They also had wide-brimmed cloches chosen capelines. Some were fabricated of horsehair and were almost transparent. Yous can see through the thin horsehair to become a proposition of the wearer'south eyes. They were so flirty and seductive.

Around the mid-19th century, women began wearing sporty hats like boaters, which were besides chosen sailors. There were a lot of Tyroleans, a blazon of fedora, during this menstruation. You lot'd come across women hiking, mount climbing, or out in a rowboat doing active things, and they'd be wearing these new sporty hats. The hats changed with the period. A boater or sailor, which appointment back to 1850, would've been very small in 1890 merely larger between nigh 1900 and 1915 to adapt the pompadour hairdos.

"Godey'south" also has fashion plates of women on horseback. They sometimes called these women amazons or equestriennes. They often wore either a small top lid or a fiddling sailor hat.

Collectors Weekly: Were hats initially seen merely as manner accessories or did they have other purposes?

Langley: We can only speculate near why people started wearing hats. Keeping warm, indicating status, making oneself more attractive to the opposite sex would seem to be obvious reasons. Every bit early on as 4000 B.C., a Neolithic artist from the Sahara Desert created an enchanting cavern drawing of women wearing elaborate turbans every bit they raced alongside longhorn cattle. So, evidently, at that place were hats earlier people wrote down historical events.

Collectors Weekly: What were the prominent styles during the Victorian era?

Langley: The Victorian era is 1837 to 1900, which is a very long fourth dimension. Within that, during the Civil State of war era, you had very demure bonnets. Bonnets had been popular for a while, and the brims ranged from long to halfway off the face. During the Civil War, they were more than off the face, but taller. The lip of the bonnet would often be trimmed with lace and artificial flowers, a little plumage, and even artificial grapes or some kind of vegetable.

By the 1860s, very fashionable young women would often adopt a pocket-sized, perky-looking hat instead of a bonnet. For evenings, of course, there would be headdresses, which would exist made out of lace, ribbons, and sometimes jewels. Simply as far as the outdoor headwear for daytime, it was either a bonnet or a sporty-looking lid.

"Silent movies were a large influence on hats and clothes. Women wanted whatever the actresses wore."

During the 1870s, crinoline hoop skirts went out of fashion and the bustle look came in. The bustle expect would final from the 1870s to the belatedly 1890s. The hurry expect'south nigh obvious characteristic was a prominent rear cease that swayed enticingly when a lady walked. Some of the era's small hats had long strings that trailed down the dorsum of the bodice and were called "kissing strings," from a French phrase that translates to "Follow Me, Immature Human." So it'due south a big bustle dress with a huge fanny that swayed from side to side. These piddling ribbon streamers from the back of the hat would also sway very enticingly.

There were bigger hats during all of these periods, just hats were mostly small during the 1870s. They got a little larger during the 1880s. Some were off the confront while others tipped down over the eyes a fiddling. Those were like to the tilts of the 1940s.

At that place was a great change in mode toward the end of the 1890s. Some people consider this the offset of the Edwardian period. Queen Victoria was nonetheless live, but she wasn't exactly a fashion plate. Edward'south wife, Alexandra, was the British style leader, and at that place were also a lot of French fashion leaders.

Big sleeves were pop during this period. The big fanny of the bustle disappeared, and women were participating more in sports, particularly bicycling. Some of the cycling women were mercilessly satirized. They would really vesture big, puffy bloomers to bicycle. They were the aforementioned type of bloomers advocated in the 1850s and '60s in a failed clothes-reform effort. But by the 1890s, they defenseless on for sports and were worn with little straw boaters borrowed from men'south article of clothing. In menses photos, you'll note women are becoming more believing!

The years 1900 to 1910 are associated with the Edwardian era. Most the end of the 1890s, graphic artist Charles Dana Gibson had a tremendous influence on fashion and hats. His Gibson Girl was one of the first American looks, and it became pop abroad. He depicted women wearing a variety of cute hats. They were however corseted, but the favorite dress of the Edwardian catamenia was a white batiste lacy dress. Information technology was chosen a lingerie wearing apparel because information technology was white and lacy merely similar underwear of the day. It has go very desirable for collectors.

The Gibson Girl is sometimes shown without a hat if she's indoors or doing something very coincidental. But most of the time she wears a larger, more than modern looking chapeau. Gibson Girls ofttimes had a pompadour reminiscent of the hairdos of Marie Antoinette, whose hairdo came dorsum in style again and again. You saw information technology in the 1940s and the '60s.

Civil War-era spoon bonnets took their proper name from the lid's open, oval shape.

The pompadour hairdos, of course, demanded tall toque hats. Sometimes the hats looked virtually like an oval dinner platter. People frequently call them platter hats or plateaus. They weren't very wide, and then they were held to the pompadours with hatpins. Some had wavy brims while others were ofttimes trimmed on the skirt with roses, ribbons, and feathers.

From 1905 on y'all began to run across Gainsboroughs, which were large, wide hats. About 1907, Lily Elsie starred on Broadway in an operetta called "The Merry Widow," so everybody had to have a Gainsborough "Merry Widow" hat. I accept a lot of cartoons and satirical photo postcards that fabricated fun of the hats. One shows a man trying to kiss a woman, but he can't get beneath her Gainsborough to practise it. It's corny merely funny stuff. And they were big—some Gainsboroughs are 22 inches in diameter. They were pop from almost 1907 to nigh 1914.

Women of that period also used a lot of long hatpins. There were jokes nigh how a adult female might jab a man with ane if he came on too strong.

From well-nigh 1910 to 1920 we come across the ancestry of mod vesture. Paul Poiret revolutionized mode in hats and wearing apparel. He claims to take abolished the corset, equally did many others, like Madeleine Vionnet and Jeanne Lanvin. Just it was probably a collaboration of different designers. Coco Chanel came on the scene in the latter one-half of the teens. She opened hat boutiques in the early part of the decade and branched out into dress.

Silent movies were a large influence at this time on hats and clothes. Women wanted to purchase whatever the silent movie actresses wore. This is also the decade the suffragettes put along their strongest efforts to win the right to vote.

By about 1912, partly because of the influence of Paul Poiret, you began to see sleek piffling hats with a lot of vertical trim. They called them toques because they didn't have brims. At the aforementioned time, y'all began to see many more sporty hats, fedora variations, boaters, and bicorns. From the turn of the century, motoring hats became popular because more women wore motoring wearing apparel. By and large, they wore footling caps that looked like the caps men wear today, only with a puffy crown.

There'south a picture of ane of these hats in the second edition of my book with a Mary Pickford characterization. She, of class, was one of the nigh famous silent movie stars. The hat is tweed-bank check with a little scarf that runs through two loops on the top of the hat and ties under the chin. The cars at that time were open up, and the roads were clay, and so women would wearable adequately large-brimmed hats with big veils or scarves tied over them so they wouldn't blow abroad.

Pre-cloches—hats with very deep crowns—were also developed in the teens. I saw one online recently past Jeanne Lanvin. She was a milliner before she became a famous dress designer. It was black velvet with emerald satin Fine art Deco pinwheels on each side and black lining.

By the cease of the teens, more modern-looking shirtwaists and skirts and correspondingly coincidental-looking hats started to get very noticeable. The newly emancipated flapper who could at present vote wanted to imitate the guys, so she bobbed her hair and wore smaller cloches that looked somewhat mannish. Women wanted to be equals—they didn't want to be treated like delicate flowers anymore.

Collectors Weekly: Where does the give-and-take cloche come from?

Langley: It ways "bell" in French. Bell describes the shape of the hat. One of my "Godey'southward Lady'due south" books from the 1860s mentions the word, referring to a hat. I couldn't discover a corresponding picture of it, but from the clarification, it was cypher like the cloches of the 1920s.

Women wore cloche hats during the day, as well as sports hats. The illustrations on the outsides of hatboxes tended to emphasize sports hats. In my volume, at that place'due south a picture of a hatbox with scenes of women golfing and playing tennis.

Headache bands, such every bit this Fine art Deco, rhinestone tiara from the 1920s, were perfect for a night out in a speakeasy.

In the evening they'd clothing jeweled tiaras or a jeweled headache band. I'm not sure how that proper name came nigh, but it probably had something to exercise with going to the speakeasy and drinking a bunch of hooch while you were dressed in your gorgeous beaded dress. The headache band would go down to your eyebrows and necktie at the back of your head. Then, at dwelling house, they'd wear boudoir caps to bed, which looked amazingly similar the 18th-century caps of Marie Antoinette.

In the late '20s women as well wore helmet cloches. They fit very shut, and a lot of them didn't even accept a brim. They were also called skull caps and were ofttimes beautifully jeweled for eveningwear. At that place are several examples of them in the book, too.

With the Depression in the '30s, hats got much smaller but also perkier, as if they were trying to keep spirits upwards. Greta Garbo wore a tilted hat with a large plume that fit very close to the head when she was in a Ceremonious War-period movie called "Romance." The minute that hat came out, they called it the Eugenie, who'd been the concluding empress of France.

Collectors Weekly: How many hats would a woman wear in a day?

Langley: That would depend on where she was going and what she was wearing. For example, you would probably put on a little boudoir cap for breakfast, and you might get out it on if you were working effectually the house. But well-nigh pictures bear witness women going hatless while doing housework.

If you were going shopping, you would cull a more breezy felt or harbinger cloche to become with your ensemble. Once more, depending on what you were doing, information technology would either look more formal or sportier. If y'all were going to a dejeuner or to tea or to a speakeasy, you'd wearable a much more formal hat. If you were going to a dance, similar the flappers, you'd clothing a jeweled headache ring or a jeweled cloche. Before bed, you'd put on your boudoir cap again.

Collectors Weekly: Did hairstyles and hats impact each other?

Langley: They definitely interacted. For instance, equally far back as Marie Antoinette and the big powdered hairdos, women wore tiny, doily-type things or big enveloping bonnets. The hats either sat on peak of the hair or covered it entirely. One of the most famous bonnets from that menstruation, and however effectually today, is the calash bonnet. It had ribs. You lot could lower information technology and fold it flat virtually like the height of an old-fashioned railroad vehicle, which is I guess how it got the name calash.

At the beginning of the 1800s, women often cutting their hair very brusque in a Titus look. And then you had hats—oftentimes turbans—that flattered this hairstyle. The turban is one of many basic hat shapes that take been with us for centuries. The same is truthful of the beret. Most of the basic beret styles take roots in antiquity. A lot of them are from the Renaissance, similar the berets of Henry Viii.

By the 1830s, women favored big hairdos with lots of loops and knots, the biggest of which were called Apollo'southward knots. The bonnets of that catamenia had big crowns and a brim that was way upwardly off the face. The Apollo'south knots would fit inside the tall crown of the hat.

That interaction between pilus and hat continued through history. If y'all were going to wear a shut-fitting cloche chapeau in the 1920s, y'all had to have your pilus bobbed to fit in the cloche.

Collectors Weekly: Who were some of the best-known hat designers between the Victorian and flapper eras?

Known as a Jane Austen bonnet, this circa 1812 slice is made of raw silk draped and shirred over a wire frame.

Langley: One of the all-time about famous designers was Caroline Reboux. She started working around the Ceremonious State of war. Jeanne Lanvin is another. She began her career in the late Victorian catamenia and designed hats before becoming a clothes designer. Madame Virot was too a very famous designer from the mid-19th century on.

"Godey'due south Lady's" mentions an American designer named John Genin. Another very famous milliner was J. Suzanne Talbot. Maison Lewis made very nice hats. And by the teens, of course, y'all had Coco Chanel.

Madame Alphonsine, Rose Descat, and Madame Georgette were very well known. Madame Suzy was very famous and some of Paul Poiret'south hats are out of this globe. He had someone design his hats to become with his ensembles, merely I empathize that he took an agile part, but like Christian Dior, in selecting and suggesting the design of the hat. American designers from, say, 1910 would include Hattie Carnegie, who trained in French republic, and Peggy Hoyt.

In the '20s, the new names were Lilly Daché and Bes-Ben, which was a combination of the first names of designer Benjamin J. Greenfield and his sister Bessie. A Bes-Ben hat brought five figures at an auction in the 1990s. He designed niggling tilt hats during Globe War II. Sometimes they'd have petty champagne bottles or a whole living room on acme. They had all kinds of really outrageous things on them. And Caroline Reboux was nevertheless designing in the '20s.

Collectors Weekly: Did women adorn their hats with their own accessories?

Langley: I think a lot of women refurbished their hats to get with what they were wearing. A lot of antique hats accept probably gone through many changes over the years that nosotros merely don't know about. I have a few hats that I'chiliad sure are all original, but I have plenty of others that I'chiliad not so sure about.

I've often wished my hats could talk and tell me about themselves. Yous get trivial clues, though. For example, sometimes if you wait very advisedly you'll discover lilliputian clipped threads where someone made an alteration.

Collectors Weekly: How did hats indicate the social status of women?

Langley: The higher their social strata, the more than they patronized the French designers. Afterwards on the American designers became more important, but they never had quite the same cachet as the top French designers. Working-course women would oft meet fashion plates in dressmakers' windows. If they were handy with a needle, they might try to emulate the French styles. People were quite way-conscious.

Collectors Weekly: Could you tell us nearly the controversies surrounding plumage hats and hats adorned with whole birds?

Langley: Sure. Well, that went on for like a million years. In the book, there's a little card from The Society for Abolishing the Wearing of Birds. It explains the damage to bird populations caused past wearing them for ornamental purposes. It was a movement led by the Audubon people in the 1880s and then after by Queen Alexandra, among others, to restrict the number of exotic feathers used by milliners.

The carte du jour is from the 1890s, but birds continued to exist used. Fifty-fifty in the 1940s you saw bird feathers on hats. But there were laws prohibiting, for example, the use of birds of paradise. They were trying to get women to wear hats with barnyard fowl feathers and others that were not endangered or rare. Ostrich feathers were used forever. The protests were partially successful, though, and ultimately created awareness about the issue.

Collectors Weekly: What was the appeal of wearing an entire bird on a hat?

American milliner One thousand. Howard Hodge'south 1950s masterpiece features clipped feathers over panné velvet and argent lamé.

Langley: In part, I call up it was that women became more than assertive later on they won the right to vote. These hats were also designed to attract men and to brand other women envious. But they were also worn to perk up the wearer'southward spirits. A lot of their reasons for picking plumage, let alone wearing a expressionless bird, might be difficult for us to understand today.

Even some of the World War II-era hats had big feathers. Most of these came from ostrich farms. Cawston's in Southern California was one of the almost famous ostrich farms. Some people say they didn't have to impale the ostrich, that they'd only pluck some feathers. I don't know exactly what went on at the ostrich farms, but Cawston'south had ostriches hitched to carts that people could ride in and they made ostrich-feather fans. I accept one in its original box. It has a flick of an ostrich-drawn cart on information technology.

I gauge that's one reason people did things to their hats—to be individualistic. There's a picture in my volume "Roaring 20s Manner: Jazz" of a immature woman in Arab republic of egypt on a world tour. She and her family unit are riding camels. She'due south wearing a great cloche hat and having a marvelous time. You can tell she felt at the height of fashion. You can learn a lot about the evolution of women's rights and their attitudes from the hats, the vintage photographs, and the way plates.

Seeing a flapper dress in person is an amazing feeling because the fabrics and colors are and then different from the mode they look in a photo. The beading is amazing. I forget where I read this, but flapper dresses represented the start time in more than a thousand years that it was okay for a adult female'southward legs to be shown to the knees.

Collectors Weekly: How long have people collected hats?

Langley: Hat collecting began as early on equally Marie Antoinette's day. A squeamish used hat would exist passed down to a maid or someone lower on the social scale. Then a lot of those people would sell them on the second-manus markets. In the last century there was an Englishman named Paget who collected hats, and in the 1940s R. Turner Wilcox wrote several books on chapeau collections. That was fairly early on.

Books like Turner's (and mine!) are very proficient resource for aspiring collectors. They should read everything they tin on the bailiwick, just they should also familiarize themselves with hats by looking at as many of them every bit possible—in exhibits, at museums, anyplace where in that location might be a hat. In my role of the country, the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Costume Establish in New York Urban center produces some wonderful shows. Kent State University in Ohio has a fantastic vesture drove. Of course, if you lot go to Europe, there are astonishing places like the Victoria and Albert Museum.

If you lot're collecting, go to the shows and enquire the people you lot come across there if they have any hats. Older people that you lot know are also a skillful source. Inquire them if they might take hats in their attic. If they practise, ask them a little flake about the history of who wore them and when and where they might take been worn. Be sure to write everything down.

Collectors Weekly: Exercise you ever wear the hats in your collection?

Langley: No. I don't think it's a good idea to wear them, unless it'south something afterward, like a 1950s hat. But I wouldn't even habiliment a pristine '50s hat. I might try one on for a lecture, but not if it was a very early on hat.

With an early lid, there will never be another one exactly like it. In other words, you develop a sense of responsibleness. If I contribute to this thing's downfall, I'one thousand going to feel pretty bad.

Collectors Weekly: What are some of the most sought-subsequently hats for collectors?

This "racy" Rosalind leghorn harbinger hat was worn past younger women in the 1860s.

Langley: In the 1990s, the large Gibson Girl hats, those huge Gainsboroughs, were very collectible. Now, I'd say there'due south more than involvement in hats that came later, between the 1920s and '60s. The earlier hats are still very collectible and very pricey, just they've largely disappeared from the market. So people take been collecting designers from afterwards periods such as the mid-20th century.

Basically the rarity of a hat comes down to its age and designer. If information technology has a provenance—if you take any tape of who wore it, where it was purchased, etcetera—that would besides make it more valuable. Of course beauty is another factor.

I recently saw a hat that was cut-velvet in a flame stitch blueprint, which would signal a very early date. It looked merely like one of those Tudor berets or caps that Henry VIII would've worn. I'm pretty sure it'southward non Henry Viii vintage, but I've looked through all my fashion plates, and I think information technology could exist from virtually 1810. A collector of early hats would cream at the mouth over it. But a collector who is focused on 1950s designers might walk correct past.

If you're interested in hats, you should definitely learn as much every bit you lot tin near lots of different hats, fifty-fifty the ones you may not want to collect, and examine them shut-up. Sometimes sellers misidentify dates, and then you should acquire all you tin can about the different periods. It'due south a big help, peculiarly if an online hat seller posts a picture of the inside of the hat and then that people who are knowledgeable can meet whether the label is consistent with the given engagement. Simply in the end, if you see something and it just calls to you, whether it's 1930, 2000, or whenever, you lot should just get it.

(All images in this commodity courtesy Sue Langley from her book, "Vintage Hats & Bonnets")

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