MILADY’S HATS

Evening Star, Issue 22578, 20 February 1937, Page 25

MILADY’S HATS

WHAT WOiEN SPEND All in one day, recently, I helped a wealthy woman to take a hat away from a Mayfair salon at a cost of logs, and assisted a hard-up friend to choose one for 5s lid in a big; store, said a woman reporter in the ‘ Sunday Express.’ . Both were of fur; one was an imitation of the other, but at a distance of two feet you would never have known it. . t , Alost men of my acquaintance would have sworn there was not a skilling between them. The 15-guinea, woman told me she buys 15 hats a year; the hard-up friend buys five. I went round London staring at women’s heads. I picked out the bats X

coveted, and then asked their owners how they cope with the hat problem. Miss Peggy Crawford, the film extra, who wore a different hat each day or the eight days’ hearing of her suit for damages against a film company, told me; “I have about 30; I love hats. 1 don’t mind so much about other clothes, but I will have pretty hats and good shoes and gloves. “ I save'up for my hats. Some I buy and others I copy from old favourites. I usually pay from one to two guineas for a hat. I have all style, boaters, berets, halo styles. I like to try them all.” Next I spoke to Miss Eileen Evans, a secretary, of Shepherd’s Bush, who was wearing a gay Tyrolean hat of green and scarlet. “ I have five hats—this one to wear with tweeds, a black velvet beret, a plain black felt, a brown Homburg. and a beret for rainy days. I pay anything from 6s lid to 15s. 1 don t think a girl could manage with less than four or five hats.” Miss Joyce Barbour, the actress, playing in ‘ The Two Bouquets,’ told me: “ I buy a dozen hats a year, and pay about three guineas; If I like the shape of a hat I have it copied in more expensive material. “ I wear mostly hats of the big beret type. J also have three Tyrolean hats, which I think arc so becoming to English faces.” Miss Joan Richardson, lady’s maid, of Mayfair, wearing a chic little pluracolourcd velvet cap, said: “ 1 have five hats—two were given to mo by my mistress. Two are plain hats I can wear with anything, this one

for dressier clothes, a beret and a suede one for the country. I never pay more than 8s lid. . I still hadn't found who buys the bigpriced hats. . . , v , 1 spoke to an exquisitely-dressed woman in a Bond street tea shop, Mrs John Farqnnson, of St. James street. “I never pay more than five guineas for a hat, as I get tired of them quickly,” she said. “ I have about a dozen. A clever little milliner I know copies model hats foe me.” Then a marchioness, who asked me not to mention her name, told me: “ I usually pay five to ten guineas. For a fur, or one with osprey feathers, I pay more—sometimes 15 guineas. “ But then the hats I buy can always he altered and last several years. I am often tempted by cheaper hats, “ Once I bought a very becoming hat in a Piccadilly shop for. 10s. I wore it for months.” Derek Skeffington, brilliant young hat designer, of Berkeley Square, told me; “ You may think the prices of hats designed by well-known milliners sound exorbitant, but you must remember it often takes days for a designer to create a bat for a client. “ Then there is often gauging and exquisite embroidery work which takes :ours and hours for the girls in the workshops to do. “ For a woman who can afford it a specially-created hat is a good investnent. It suits her features, her coifure, her figure and her personality, and gives her wonderful poise.”