THE NEW HAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 April 1938, Page 4

THE NEW HAT

SOMETHING STARTLING. A former New York ballet girl Miss Marion McKenzie, has carried out an experiment to determine just how fantastic a woman’s hat can be without exciting comment. She walked along the boulevards of Hollywood and attracted no attention at all, wearing on her head: —(1) A rather gaudy lampshade. (2) One rubber band. (3) Two artificial flowers. (4) A chain and a bath-plug. (5) A shoelace. The only comment on her headgear came from the driver of a laundry van, who said, “Huh, if you think that hat’s screwy, you ought to sec the one my wife has just bought.” STARTLING AND DIFFERENT.

Which all goes to show that it does not matter how fantastic our hats are. And the hat designers are certainly doing their best this season to make us look startling and “different.” Here are some of the models which are to be seen in London and Paris: — “Kiss Me, Hardy..” A pirate hat in black rice straw, decorated with a pigtail of carpet wool tied with a taffeta bow.

Flat hats like plates and high hats like dunces’ caps. Mexican hats with disappearing crowns, and tiny matadors’ caps secured with ribbon chin-straps. A fabric hat in sailor shape, decorated by running sealing-wax in various colours over very stiff taffeta. It is called “summer lightning.” A silk cap in candy pink with a strap meeting in two points under the chin. It is trimmed with a huge bunch of dark blue violets lined with scarlet. To wear with it is a matching muff with a Victorian pattern picked out in flowers. “Back to nature”- hats from Paris featuring decorations of crab-apple, corn, and even vegetables, such as carrots and turnips.

Paris is also sponsoring hats with pockets. I saw a black felt beret with a slit pocket at each side for tiny coloured handkerchiefs.