When do women wear hats

Rural dwellers in the United States could learn of new fashions from magazines such as Godey's Lady's Book and obtain ready-made hats and bonnets at reasonable prices through mail-order catalogs, beginning with Montgomery Ward in and Sears Roebuck after Beginning in the sixteenth century, "millinery" referred to fine artifacts for women, such as ribbons, gloves, and straw hats sold by men around Milan, Italy.

By , milliners were dressmakers who also made or sold women's hats, bonnets, headdresses, and trims. Newspaper advertisements indicate that millinery shops abounded by the eighteenth century in European and American cities, although owners were usually only known locally. Her most important client was Queen Marie Antoinette until the royal execution in January Bertin's business records preserved at the University of Paris reveal clientele to include nobility from Russia and England.

The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century affected the millinery industry in many ways. A new sewing machine, introduced in America and sold abroad, meant large quantities of hats could be produced quickly at low prices. Manufactured hats could be stored and sent to wholesalers for sales in department stores or for overseas export.

While trains and ships assisted mass-marketing distribution, overall Paris was still considered the center for elite, high-fashion hats. Wealthy women traveled to Paris for purchases, and store milliners from London and New York made annual pilgrimages to bring back the "latest" modes and trimmings for their home customers. Millinery ideas and advice were also made available to wide audiences from subscription magazines as Harper's Bazaar in the United States, Townsend's Monthly Magazine in England, and Le Follet in France.

Another clothing-and-hat trend took place in Europe outside aristocratic fashion circles during the nineteenth century. With the relaxation of sumptuary laws regarding clothing, particularly after the French Revolution, European peasant artisans, encouraged by nationalism, began to express their ethnic affiliation through elaborate outfits worn for Sunday religious services, dancing, and festivals. These colorful costumes and hats, still worn by villagers and townspeople, serve as visual representations of community and marital status to be worn on special occasions.

The women's hats are usually straw, felt, or other natural materials, and because of their multi-colored festive styles, they have served as inspiration over decades for twentieth-century fashion milliners, who may recreate the styles with new, synthetic materials. Occasionally referred to as "ethnic-chic," examples include the bead-and-sequin velvet Basque beret, the Tyrolean felt sport hat, the "pakable" rayon knotted turban, Central Asian styled velvet-and-pearl pillbox, and the cellophane Breton.

Beginning in the s, as the middle class was growing and enjoying increased leisure activities, men's tailoring techniques were first applied to women's dress. Slightly flared skirts replaced the older crinolines and were complemented by formal suit jackets. Likewise, the fanciful, highly decorated bonnet of earlier decades gave way to more simple, masculine-style headwear.

These styles represented for the "New Woman" a sense of physical freedom through sports and political independence via the suffrage movement. For outdoor sports, women wore the white linen peaked cap while rowing and yachting; and the plain flat-top, hard straw boater for cycling and later automobile driving. Boaters could be adapted for formal wear embellished with bird feathers or plumes.

Other hat styles shared by both genders included the stiff felt, round-crown bowler, or derby, and black silk top hat for horseback riding; the woolen tam-o'-shanter for lawn tennis, badminton, or cycling; the fore-and-aft as a hunting cap; and the fedora for archery or golf.

In winter, knitted stocking caps served for bobsledding, ice sailing, and skating. Indoors, the Breton was considered appropriate for bowling or roller skating, known as "rinking.

As spectators, they wear the contemporary baseball cap to league games, and as golfers, on the links. World War I brought about dramatic changes in women's clothes, hairstyles, and hats, creating a lucrative environment for entrepreneurial designers. Throughout the s, short skirts, bobbed hair, and the cloche, or bell-shaped hat, were the mode on both sides of the Atlantic.

New York and Hollywood also began attracting millinery talent from Europe. Hattie Carnegie from Austria first worked in New York at Macy's before opening her own shop and eventually creating a millinery empire with a thousand employees. Oleg Cassini, son of a Russian count, first worked in Paris before a long career designing for Hollywood studios. While individual designers maintained their own salons for one-of-a-kind headpieces, they also mass-produced less expensive styles for sales through urban department stores.

Sally Victor also got her millinery start at Macy's and by the s branched out into her own business with her husband, Victor Serges. Her hats combined fashion styling with modest pricing aimed at a wide middle-class clientele, including Mamie Eisenhower. A number of twentieth-century couturiers either began as milliners Coco Chanel or designed hats, purses, and handbags as complementary accessories to their clothing line Christian Dior.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, hats and gloves were required for attending social events. During the World War II Nazi occupation of Paris , when rationing curtailed the fashion industry and sales abroad, French women boosted their morale by defiantly wearing outlandish structures on their heads made out of scraps.

With the armistice came rebuilding and the renewed claim that Paris would again become the fashion center of the world. By the s, a cadre of influential wholesale and retail millinery clients from abroad attended Paris fashion shows, purchasing rights to copy the latest hat designs for home markets at inexpensive prices.

In New York, Bergdorf Goodman was known to have the best millinery department; its custom-made Halston hats were top of the line. Roy Halston Frowick created the now-famous deep pillbox hat that Jacqueline Kennedy wore to her husband's inauguration. The hat, designed to be worn back on the head, accommodated the First Lady's bouffant hairstyle.

Within months, the pill-box became the rage across America, boosting the millinery industry, and was thereafter known as Jackie's signature hat. Some historians see President John F. Kennedy's predilection for hatlessness as leading the trend toward eliminating men's toppers for formal attire. Others see the civil rights movement also effecting this change since hats over centuries had served as visible symbols of the class system.

Whatever the cause, in the late s, the custom for both men and women of wearing hats to social events began to disappear. Hats were seen as irrelevant, particularly to the younger generation bent on social change and personal independence.

Milliners were replaced by professional hairdressers who created self-expressing new hairstyles such as the Afro and cornrows for African Americans. Simultaneously, middle-class women were introduced to the comfort of pantsuits that had no precedents or hat-wearing fashion requirements. In contrast to the white community, urban African American women never stopped wearing hats. They continue the African tradition that survived slavery of adorning the head for worship celebrations.

Daytime weddings and luncheons are good opportunities for hat wearing, if you have a suitable one, but hats are no longer expected. None of these occasions are appropriate for a functional or athletic hat. Outside of these occasions, fashion hat wearing is up to you -- so if you love them, wear them. With a master's degree in art history from the University of Missouri-Columbia, Michelle Powell-Smith has been writing professionally for more than a decade. An avid knitter and mother of four, she has written extensively on a wide variety of subjects, including education, test preparation, parenting, crafts and fashion.

Fashionable Hats Fashionable hats, from a neat pillbox to a stylish beret, can be worn in nearly any circumstance and can vary in style, color and shape. Baseball Caps and Other Athletic Hats Hats that are less about function and more about sports typically follow male rules for hat wear. Functional Hats Clearly, dressy hats abide by one set of rules and athletic ones by quite another; however, there is another common class of hats. When You Should Wear a Hat It is particularly appropriate to wear a fashionable hat for traditional church services and funerals, as well as some dressy sporting events, like horse racing.

How to Dress Semiformally in Cold Weather. How to Dress for the Racetrack. They may keep their hats or caps on at all times if they wish. Michigan State University Extension provides many helpful resources for business behavior, including:.

As a result of career exploration and workforce preparation activities, thousands of Michigan youth are better equipped to make important decisions about their professional future, ready to contribute to the workforce and able to take fiscal responsibility in their personal lives. This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. When should women remove their hats? Did you find this article useful?