AFRAID OF SMART HATS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 119, 15 November 1935, Page 15

AFRAID OF SMART HATS

ENGLISHWOMEN'S PREJUDICE

''You English are a marvellous nation," exclaimed a Frenchwoman to me in Paris the other day, states a writer in the "Queen." "Your his-! Tory, your architecture, it is all wonderful. But I cannot understand why jthe women, of this so-clever nation cannot put on a hat! They seem to be frightened to show their pretty hair, their pink-and-white complexions, and so they cover their'heads with-a j cloche instead of wearing. a brimless hat set well back On their heads." She went oh to point out that a| cloche is in reality the most difficult I of all hats to wear successfully, yet Englishwomen persist in believing that it calls for no special art. Only an extremely chic woman can look smart in a cloche. But a piquant little up-turned affair with an audacious twist to the trimming can often transform a frump into a figure of elegance. "You Englishwomen, have an old prejudice," went on my French friend. "You think that if you look smart you will look common. Believe me, it is not so. So many Englishwomen have distinction and natural elegance, but they spoil it all by wearing the wrong hat—the dull hat instead of the smart hat. They would not lose their look of breeding if they were more daring in their hats. But they.would look different^-and, to my mind, far, far. more attractive." There is certainly every inducement this season to wear striking hats. The milliners offer us the widest choice, and the temptation to audacity was never stronger. The true halo hat. set well back on the head, is not nearly so trying to wear as one might imagine. Many women have'a pretty hairline on the forehead, and it is definitely becoming to reveal this.