#petalhat

[professorpski]

The Petal Hat for The Rose Bud Complexion

This sweet, sweet hat turns the wearer's face into a flower. You have to have a sweet face to carry it off, I think. The petal or more correctly sepals (technical term for the green bits right around a flower bud) are in cream and then their backs are in a kind of dark taupe in a thick fabric with a touch of sheen, each piece is outlined in taupe Petersham ribbon, and one of the sepals makes a little flick outwards at the back. These colors are relatively restrained, and not in green which would be the obvious choice.

The designer may have been thinking a few things: green would turn the whole thing into a silly hat only fit for the chorus of a musical comedy, and the cream and taupe means the face brings all the color to the hat. After all, if the hat itself were done in rose bud pink, or a rich dark pink, the woman wearing it would have to compete with that coloring, and few of us would win that competition. Cream is easier to wear.

If you look at the interior, you see that each piece of the hat was finished all around with the Petersham ribbon and then they were hand-basted to one another to make the shape. What you can't see is the milliner's wire which runs along each of those edges. That wire was shaped to make the cream edges turn outwards, to shape each piece to the head, and to allow that little flick at the back. Setting the fabric on the bias helped easy the shaping. There is also a narrow piece of netting with 3 mother of pearl disks and a hatpin whose head is covered with the same taupe fabric. I am not sure how that was worn, I must confess.

I am guessing it dates to the 1940s as the brand appears mostly in that decade in Women's Wear Daily although it clearly existed until the mid 1950s as least. During both of those decades women considered hats a required part of a daytime outfit for any public place or event.

It is a beautifully conceived and constructed hat, best on a youthful face in a non-serious mood, and should makes us appreciate the ways in which milliner's wire can be used to create subtle shapes.

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