THE UNIVERSAL HAT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18891, 13 December 1924, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE UNIVERSAL HAT.

No soon.o.l' does one woman emerge from one kind of slavery than she is pitched headlong into another, complains a woman writer in an English exchange. I say " headlong " deliberately. Just as she appeared to have snapped the last chain that bound her to samplers, croquet, antimacassars and all the dark horrors attendant upon votellessness, she is pitched .headlong into the clutches of the univcr ! sal hat ! There is only one hat in the world at the moment. Hence its appearance in the I singular at the head 01 this article. From j cast to west, in farthest Walthanistow and I darkest Ealing, there is only one hat—the j hat that is cloche. Manifestations of this Universal hat may vary in detail, but they are all built rigorously upon the grim j cloche principle. The main characteristic of the cloche hat lis that it is practically brimless. The reason of this is that it is extremely difficult to wear a practically brimless hat without an acute sensation of looking one's worst. That is why it was introduced. |We were getting too soft and flabby with ' our brims and our droops and our general self-indulgences. We needed dis(; pline. We needed to be .stung to a seise of reality. We got caught up in the hard materialistic spirit of the age. We got caught up in the hard materialistic outline of tiie cloche. This year the Universal bat is move j brimless than ever. Last year we wet£ i permitted a smell brim, a faint sweet | memory, the tender grace of a brim tha,t

is dead. But this year, no! Wo have put that mere sentimentality behind us. |Wo have stiffened ourselves yot further. Sometimes it is true, if you look very \ hard, you may find the remains of that I which was once a brim, attached 1o the j .-nain body of the hat. But this is only I another example of the survival of a. dcI caved organ in a system where it no I longer •functions I ______________