MILADY’S HATS

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 February 1937, Page 4

MILADY’S HATS

WHAT WOMEN SPEND. All in one day, recently, I helped a wealthy woman tb take a hat away from a Mayfair salon at a cost of 15 guineas-, and assisted a liard-up friend I to choose one for 5/11 in a big London ■ 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. Most men of my acquaintance would have sworn there was not a shilling 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 hats I 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 of the eight-days’ Hearing of her suit for damages against a film company, told me: “I have about 30; I love hats. I 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 styles, 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 j green and scarlet. l “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 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. I also have three Tyrolean hats, which I think are so becoming to English faces.” Miss Joan Richardson, lady’s maid, at Mayfair, wearing a chic little plumcolourcd velvet cap, .said: “I have five hats —two were given to me 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 8/11.” I still hadn’t found who buys the big-priced hats. I spoke to an exquisitely dressed wo-

man in a Bond Street tea-shop, Mrs. John Farquason of St. James Street. “1 never pay more than five guineas for a hat as 1 get tired of them quick-' ly,” she said. “I have about a dozen. A clever little milliner I know copies model hats for me.” Then a marchioness, who asked me not to mention her name, told me: “I usually pay live to ten guineas. For a fur, or one with osprey feathers. 1 paj r more—sometimes 15 guineas. “But then the hats I buy can always | bo altered and lust several years. 1am often (empted by cheaper hats. "Once 1 bought, a very becoming hat 1 in a Piccadilly shop for 10/-. 1 wore ( it for months.” ( Derek Skellington, brilliant young

hat designer, of Berkeley Square, told me: "You may think the price of hats designed by well-known milliners sound exorbitant, but you must remember it often takes days for a designer to create a hat for a client. “Then there is otfen gauging and ex-

quisite embroidery avotk •which, takeshours and hours for the girls in the workshops to do. “For a woman who,can afford it a specially-created liat-is a good invest/inent.. ’lt suits her features, her coiffure, .her figure and her personality, mid gives her wonderful poise.”-