COLUMN
by Clair Hughes AlternativeHats Women in welding class at the beginning of WWII, 1940s
In 1942 a young Englishwoman, shopping for a
special occasion, spent precious wartime coupons on “an airforce blue dress and matching hat. The hat was a disaster. It was an airforce shape with streamers down the back, but the material was crêpe de chine so in the first shower the hat just disintegrated.” Without a hat, the outfit lost its formality, and with no more coupons, this was indeed a disaster. Clothes were rationed in wartime Britain, German-occupied France and, to a lesser extent, America. Nobody, however, rationed hats. Regulating hats would be like herding cats – impossible. Controls on wool, cotton and rayon were imposed in Britain in 1940: most wool (therefore felt) was reserved for the military, silk was banned for civilian use, and straw from Italy had dried up. Milliners would clearly have to find alternatives. Styles took conflicting directions. There
Clair Hughes is an independent scholar. She previously held the position of Professor of English and American Literature at the International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan. She is the author of Hats (2017), Dressed in Fiction (2005) and Henry James and the Art of Dress (2001)
were war-oriented hats like the British ‘airforce shape’, and war-resistant hats, evoking pre-WWII Paris when Schiaparelli’s ‘shoe hat’ freed hats to take any shape they pleased. Famed London-based milliner Aage Thaarup hated “anything to do with war”. The headache was “shortages of hoods, straw, silks and velvet. We’ve certainly got plenty of ‘red tape’ [bureaucratic regulations],” his assistant grumbled. Thaarup promptly bought up large quantities of red tape, creating a range of witty hats. Similarly defiant, Lucien Lelong, one of the leading couturiers at the time in Paris, made a hat of wood shavings, though none of these hats could survive a shower. The hats of Thaarup and of Lelong were
for clients who paid for exclusivity, not fabric. Parisian milliner Madame Paulette, however, found a democratic but chic answer to shortages when wrapping a scarf around her head and fixing it with a gold pin, thereby launching the turban as a modern fashion accessory. Needing little material, it became wartime’s universal
headgear. America controlled supplies to manufacturers, and after 1942 synthetics were reserved for war production. Still, trimmings were plentiful: flowered, feathered and jewelled, the American turban became opulent cocktail wear, worn by Hollywood stars. Movie star glamour faded, however, as turbans became mass- produced catalogue items which alongside new young hatless fashions looked dated. In Britain at war, ‘turban chic’ was brief. Almost any fabric made a turban: covering the whole head, it was ideal protective wear for agricultural and factory workers. Frugal and workmanlike, its point was practicality, not glamour. Some glamour did return with the snood, an inexpensive but attractive way to display the new longer hair styles. In winter, however, turbans and snoods gave way to the knitted pixie hood. “I swore when war was over,” one woman said, “I’d never look at a pixie hood again.” But in occupied Paris, turbans stayed
defiantly chic. Madame Paulette launched a collection of huge, overstuffed ones that towered up over the face. Janet Flanner, Paris correspondent for The New Yorker magazine, reported that Parisiennes “wear fantastically high, upholstered turbans”. The German authorities accused milliners of violating controls, but were told the turbans were home-made. Hats were now a crucial element of fashion, the one way to give significance to an event, bringing fantasy, colour and humour into a bleak world. They could be fashioned at almost no cost from paper, celluloid, ribbon or fabric scraps; there were even reports of cheese boxes decorated with pigeon feathers as hats. One might have expected British
utilitarian military styles to prevail in war. But, no, it was the flights of fancy, the outrageous and the witty, that triumphed. War and restrictions, far from sobering up French hats, inspired milliners to push boundaries, find alternatives and defy conventions – hats will find ways not only to survive but to flourish.
may 2024 | 47
Photo: Alamy
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