“Hattitude”
By Fay Mitchell
Bows, feathers, and ribbons are some of my favorite trims on hats, preferably with a broad brim. But hats are not just for Sunday meetings, they are everyday essentials. When there’s rain or snow, I want a hat. The winds do blow, I want a hat. When my hair looks really bad, I want a hat. The really glorious hats of the 1940s and ’50s, for men and women, were descended from much more utilitarian stock. Hats have been around for a long time. A fairly practical fellow from the Bronze Age whose frozen body was recovered from a mountain in Europe (where he had been since around 3250 BC), was found wearing a bearskin cap akin to Russian fur hats but without flaps. A tomb painting in Thebes, Egypt, dating to about 3200 BC, shows a man in a conical straw hat.
For years hats were tools of the trade for bakers, warriors, maids, cooks, police officers, nurses, and others, and were markers of the working class. But Marie Antoinette and the French court came along to shake things up in the 1700s. Plumed and feathered hats came to represent wealth and privilege. Spectacular hairstyles were constructed to support frills and bejeweled hats. The English took it further with frothy accents, rosettes and tulle and wide brims to accommodate pompadour hairstyles. Things were looking up!
Men were in on the upgrades too, eschewing various metal helmets or coils for hoods, brims, berets, feathers and furs over the centuries. Then there were the times men gave up and just wore wigs. The arrival of the 20th century brought top hats, derbies, bowlers and fedoras. Do you remember “The Untouchables” on TV in the ’60s? Officer Eliot Ness had a truly tough hat. He and his team fought crime with style. On the women’s front was the Jackie Kennedy pillbox. Berets and turbans had been popularized, as were wide brims, while pancake and cartwheel hats were holdovers from the ’50s.
I grew up in the ’60s and faithfully attended a Baptist church in rural eastern North Carolina where all the ladies wore hats, as was the African American church woman tradition. There were snappy little brims, flowers, nets and feathers, but wide brims reigned supreme. There’s a theory that the hats were a holdover from slavery days, when the women lived prescribed and limited lives. Thus a hat tradition celebrating excess was born. On Sunday they could show their personality and individuality in the service of the Lord. Some say the practice is Biblically based since in Corinthians it says a woman’s head should be covered. Others say that like music and dance, clothing was an outlet for expressive people to showcase creativity and style.
Since my mom loved hats, I suppose it was inevitable that I would too. She had a nice collection and sometimes one followed me home from Craven County to Durham. Even though American women began abandoning hats in the 1960s, it held strong in the Black community for another 30 or 40 years. When I go back to the church in Fort Barnwell, there are still a few women wearing hats. I still wear one sometimes myself, but at my Presbyterian church, I may be the only one. Still, there is nothing like a little “hattitude.” Remember the wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle. The hat parade of the guests was just delightful! Those Brits know how to do it, and Queen Elizabeth is among the best. If I had a royal milliner, I would be too. Here in North Carolina at her recent swearing-in, State Auditor Beth Wood wore a beautiful black hat. Let’s not forget Rep. Alma Adams, who rocked great hats in the North Carolina legislature and still does while serving in Washington, DC.
So, on this National Hat Day, I declare a new allegiance to wearing hats. My mom has passed, and my sister is not so interested in hats, so they all came to me. My honey’s sister had an astounding collection and passed just one week later. Three of her nieces and I got to share that cache. The problem is I have more hats than closet space, but out of respect and pride, when the pandemic ends, they will see the light of day…at church, the game, the park. Hats make you feel good, and can be your glory, as illustrated in the picture book, “Crowns.” Get yourself some hattitude and enjoy a hat!
