Sunday, September 21, 2008

Hats for m'lady

The sign at JoAnn's was a reminder of days long gone. When I was young, starting out on my career as a magazine editor, hats were a chore. Did you have an important business lunch? It meant gloves, nylons, heels, girdle and, of course, hat. The formality of those days is long gone, happily. But I still have an aversion to wearing headgear, even when it's quite necessary on a very hot, sunny Arizona day.

But that sign wasn't talking about making the modern little pill boxes which were the style back in my early working life. Oh, no. Rather, hats as art objects and collectibles. Periodically, I find such fluffy confections in local antiqueries.

Not just Victoriana, sometimes a straw quite perfect for Joan Crawford or Ava Gardner.

You'll periodically see fancy hats at Prescott events -- quite in keeping with an Old West theme, for example.

Members of our active Victorian Society appear in costume at ice cream socials, senior living communities...

...and sometimes just stroll our streets.

It keeps life here interesting. If I don't have to wear gloves, nylons, heels, girdle and hat.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:42 AM

    "It keeps life here interesting. If I don't have to wear gloves, nylons, heels, girdle and hat."

    Now that would be a chore. Somethings are a lot easier, if less interesting.

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  2. Excellent post. Who shot that bird on Georgene's chapeau??

    Hermano

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  3. Hats and gloves are OK, as long as they are functional ones.
    Nylons, heels, girdle - cruel and inhuman!

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  4. Great photos.
    Thank you for sharing and making me smile.

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  5. steve -- if I had to depend upon hat & gloves (and heels and girdle) to make life interesting, I'd be lost!!! They are items that tend to keep a female person in a cage, not able to run with the wind or climb the hillside!

    bro -- no doubt someone in the Third World. I'm sure it wasn't anybody local -- we'd have Game & Fish down on us in a hurry.

    stitch -- hat & gloves midwinter, yes! (And I'm sure you'd make a splendid matching set, perhaps in alpaca or cashmere for the coldest days...

    woody -- welcome and do visit often. Do you have a true monsoon in Ireland as we do here in Arizona?

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  6. Anonymous4:30 PM

    And, remember what the women of the Victorian Era wore on the beach...

    ...LOTS of clothes!

    ~Anon in AV.

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  7. anon av -- and do you recall seeing pictures from that era -- of what they called "Bathing Machines"?

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