That Elusive Hat

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 4, Issue 8, 1 February 1926, Page 17

That Elusive Hat

(fashions Glues for fohing an S”Per 'Present ‘Problem

HATS! Women feed on them, someone once said. In any case we are always worrying about them. To want a new hat is a chronic feminine ailment, and pity is the feeling it should inspire, not blame, since it gnaws at our minds all the year long and intrudes mercilessly on our pleasures and our serious meditations. Nothing is more difficult to find than a becoming hat, because though it may become you on the day you choose it, on the following day it will let you down, by making you look plainer than you have ever looked in your life. Oh! Don’t you know that hat spirit? When you are dressing and reach the moment to put on your hat, quite pleased with your dress, your coat and your shoes, then it is that the hat spirit appears and deliberately destroys your content. He, or she, spoils everything. The hat

which yesterday suited you to perfection, to-day makes you look hideous. It scowls, or leers, or looks stupid, dull, common, everything, anything but charming. And that is the point at which I want to pause. A hat should be charming. A dress may, perhaps, be successful without charm, but a hat, never. THE hard little felt hat which has been in fashion for so long is not often endowed with charm. It borrows a reflection from a charming face, but cannot lend one to a face which is without charm. The old-fashioned ■ picture hat had it.

The marquis had it. too. The poke bonnet could claim to a demure version of it. But the tight little clochc! Mon dien! It is quite devoid of it, or was until the other day, when it suddenly sprouted feathery trimmings and perky brims, rosettes tumbling rakishly over the cars, or pert ribbons darting from the sides. Desperately the little felt is pleading for its life. It wants to stay. It is ready to make endless concessions for the permission to live “another moon.” ITS rival is the toque, a smartly draped little hat with soft lines,

and the turban also draped, and a new form of marquis, and that quaint little Watteau turban. These are made in velvet, and in satin, They look amazingly well in the hand, but they all want wearing. They have charm, but the charm is Parisian, and that is why French hats are not easy for Colonial women to wear. English charm is not the same as French charm. It is less clear, crisp, and neat. A New Zealand girl likes a pretty hat, a French girl likes a trim one. Coloured felts are the vogue now in Paris. They are very trim, very well worn, and demanding complexions tuned to a high key. Indeed, the complexion makes the hat look right or wrong, and if you happen not to have a natural colour, you must cither get one or be content to look wrong.