HATS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3311, 8 March 1926, Page 7

HATS.

(By Edgar IVfilne.)

Why is it no Frenchman can wear a modern hat properly and no Frenchwoman ever wears one improperly? I have recently been travelling oyer Europe; certain minor peculiarities have struck me. one with such force that I followed it up, took constant notes of it, and so adjusted my first impressions. Barely have I found myself in n German, Italian, Spanish, or French crowd that my ‘attention did not concentrate on the extraordinary variety of headgear each nation affects. Abroad, the English wear only two kinds of hats at present. One is the long narrow, grey Homburg; the other is the ihiGodged. flexible Oxford pull-over brim down in front and up behind, 'if you sec a thousand Englishmen on the Continent together or in succession the chances are they arc wearing one o tthese two sorts and wearing them in the same way. Tweed caps, which used to be so popular on the Continent, are now demode. The Italians sport a big-crowned, broad, flat-brimmed Borsolino lolb, with the ribbon-how ■ at the back. It is of various colors, green for choice; and the ywear it jammed down to their very collar-bones. You can always tell a. fashionable Italian youth a mile oil by the size of bis bat and the lact that it literally swamps'Tiis bead. But that is not all'. He—like all the Latin races—likes to give it a picturesque, or perhaps I should say, picaresque, air by pinching the crown. ’’Hut till his extorts ai’o wasted"'on the broad brim; the brim defies him; it is too stiff. . How different is the American.! He detests a hat to which he cannot give an individual. “What’s the use, he says, ’'ot a hat you can t contiol? His favorite is a ' soft-brimmed felt which lie can punch and twist about into fifty shapes and angles until he has found just the right one. The Germans have two kinds—the little narrow-brimmed bowler and the drab or green Homburg hat, both manifestly too small lor Bond-street ca nons. But-here is a solemn thought did anyone ever see a German in a German in aslirdlu enitwy shi'dl uetaj large hat? Did anyone ever see him in a graceful hat or such atnu: gracefully worn? No; lie invariably wears it on the top of his closely-cropped head, with a slight tilt forward. Hats, I often think, are one of the modern German’s aesthetic failures. As ‘or France, the French youth has only two varieties ol hat, the small, black bowler (or melon) perched on top of his hirsute head, far too small, or Hie flexible felt Alpine or Homburg of black, green, brown, drab, beige, nigger—inflexible ol brim and much too large. It is a pity, but accept it as an axiom: Every would-be fashionable Frenchman's hat spoils the head it covers. On the promenade at Nice there arc some good-looking fellows passing before me in procession; their clothes arc all right, their hoots and gloves arc neat enough. But look at I heir hats —large or small —all misfit s. Why? ,