FIVE HATS A YEAR FOR ENGLISHWOMEN

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 234, 1 July 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

FIVE HATS A YEAR FOR ENGLISHWOMEN

Seventy-Five

Every year the women of Britain buy 75,000,000 hats. And five times a year (on an average) every wife goes home with a smile and a hatbox in the hope of pleasantly surprising her husband with the honeyed words. “Do you like me in this model, dear?" At least, that is the estimate of the head of a big hat manufacturing concern iu London, says the "Daily Mail.” Seventy-five million hats! Men probably think at once of 75,000,000 bills demanding 75,000,000 guineas. But the statistics don’t work out quite like that. Hats of 5/-. (or shall we say 4/11?) and under account for most of the total.

Out of the 15,0(10,000 women of stylish-lmt-wenring age in Great Britain, tlie manufacturers discount a percentage of "open air" girls who don’t: wear hats —except, perhaps, on special occasions, such as going to church.

This habit (or lack ot’ habit) is said to be increasing, specially in the North, but tlie hat trade does not, apparently, regard it as widespread enough to be menacing.

Million Total

Whimsies of I’ushion, leavened with rivalry for glamour, continue to lure women to the millinery departments. Many fashionable society women buy 20 hats a year, but they are the exception .rather than the rule. Women are really more economical with their headwear than men give them credit for: they often have the same hat refashioned, instead of buying a new one. They also buy material for making up hats themselves. The average woman’s hat bills probably amount to no more than £3 a year. A London wqiqan, asked foi la i anmini hat account, reckoned It comprised: Three winter .hats, two spring hats; three summer lints, one or two hats for special occasions. Bill? Under £5. What about men? The Hatters Association said that it was "fraakb impossible to say—though every lictiy knows." added the secretary, ' .hat Jir. Jones does not rush off to buy a p.uk hat because he has Just seen his friend Mr. Smith wearing a bine one." A hat salesman opined that the average man was a ’ wo-h.-itter-per-annuni: total bill, one or two guineas.