A Lament for the Modern Hat

On Thursday I took an old hat out for a spin. It was already in the reject bag, but I decided to give it one last chance, as I wanted a light coloured hat to go with my outfit that day.

There is something I have never liked about this hat, which is strange since it seems to have many things going for it: Italian-made from very high quality 100% wool, swathed in soft velvet; it is also a classic cloche – a shape I have always been drawn to, especially when I have worn bobbed hair. This hat even made the pages of Australian Vogue that year. Is it the colour, a strange olive taupe that probably does nothing for my complexion?

But no, if I sharpen my fashion intuition, that almost indefinable sense of dislike clarifies: it is a modern hat and lacks that je ne sais quoi that vintage hats possess. But I can hazard a guess: there is no sense of wit or refinement; no extraordinary attention to detail that is visible in even the stitching of vintage hats, the choice of trim. The touch of the milliner is missing.

… it is a modern hat and lacks that je ne sais quoi that vintage hats possess

Yes milliners certainly exist today, but say what you will, they lack that certain something of yesteryear. Perhaps it is because hats are out of mainstream fashion, and milliners have lost their mastery of their craft. I am aware that the modern couture milliner would be outraged by that statement, but my vintage hats bear witness: many of them were inexpensive hats designed for department stores at hoi polloi pricepoints, not by couture milliners for aristocrats.

Materials, supplies and trims have changed so much too, not only in quality, but in the variety of what is available. And perhaps in part because of this, designers of today’s hats for ordinary people with shoestring (or hatstrap) budgets display no imagination, artistry or personality. When I look at the hats high street shops offer come winter I fall asleep at my keyboard – fedoras, newsboys and sloppy knit caps year after year – they are so, so dull I die of ennui. 

On Thursday night as I donned my hat and coat to depart for home, I asked the girls in my department what they thought of this cloche. And the opinion was unanimous, “It’s okaaaay,” they chorused. “But you have much more interesting hats.”

And with that, the verdict is in – and this hat is out.