ADVENTURES IN HATS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 21068, 30 December 1931, Page 3

ADVENTURES IN HATS.

THEIR CHEQUERED CAREER. Mediaeval monks held that the devil inspired milliners. If he did, he look a long time—3oo years—to make tho hat popular, showed mostly very bad taste, and would have been powerless but for Frenchwomen. For Frenchwomen have introduced practically every new fashion in millinery, states an overseas writer. It was in 1325 that beautiful Isabel of Franco introduced into_ England the long sugar loaf "hennin 1 of satin, Iliocade or velvet from which hung a veil. Thus an uncomfortable wife—mark my moderation, for she murdered her husband Edward If. with the help of her lover, " gentle " Mortimer, and popularised an uncomfortable and extravagant hat, so uncomfortable and so extravagant, that it endured for a century. The Friars thundered at it. but the ladies shrugged their uncovered shoulders, and deemed the next world well lost, for a fine hat in this one. There were many modifications to the "heunin " _ . A very beautiful »ukl wicked Queen of France (to be sure, Isabeau had brought her wickedness from her native Bavaria) was.also a queen of fashion. She used to send, every month, a doll dressed in the latest Parisian fashion to her daughter, the Queen of England, fcihe herself wore sometimes the straight "hennin," not more than a foot high and with the point cut off so that her crown could be perched on it. Her ladies, instead of a crown, wore kerchiefs of sr.owv, fine linen, the numerous points of which formed a graceful frame to their faces. By 1420 the "hennin," longer and more pointed than ever, had a powerful rival in tho "scoffion," or rich, closefitting cap adorned with two things that can only be compared to fat sausages. These were very stiff find very long, and they stuck out so on each side that their fashionable wearers could not pass through most doors. So the noblewomen. And the peasant women? You know those irarthenwaie saucers one puts under flower pots Well, imagine one such, larger and made of foil, worn upside down, and you havo the mediaeval peasant woman s headgear. And so. in the 15th century, hats had como in, and with a vengeance. A noblewoman had to lie on her bed for six weeks after her husband s death in a room draped (windows, ceiling and nil) in black. She wore black, too, and had her hat on. Once visitors had departed she could sneak off tho bed, but even then she kept the hat on. The "hennin" gone, other horrors replaced it. Imagine a tyre, sometimes round, sometimes oval, sometimes passing under fhe chin, and sometimes worn far at the back of the head as a shniu halo, with an opening to let the hair dangle away from the body like the tail of a mare. Imagine also, thai tyre, is covered with gold brocade or velvet, and studded with jewels. That is Ihe soi l of headgear women of the 15th century loved. 'J here was another: a round cushion. hollowed underneath so as to gather the hair inside. A hat much affected by Italian ladies.

At last canto (lto French hood, worn first, by saintly Queen Ann of Brittany, anrl after that—the hat!