HISTORY
with starch, glue and treacle, resulting in a perfectly lugubrious appearance. The stiff, crimped finish made it difficult to sew, and it could not be ironed, as it would stretch and lose its shape. Worse, the black dye was unstable and not waterproof. It would spot in the rain and fade when packed away. (A method of waterproofing crape was not invented until 1897.) Like many silks, crape was originally
woven in Italy and exported to the rest of Europe. By the 17th century, French weavers mastered the technique of making crapes. It was subsequently introduced to England by French Huguenots who had fled religious persecution in their homeland, but it wasn’t until the 19th century that British weavers began producing crape on a large scale. Aided by the industrialisation of the textile industry and the booming cult of mourning in Victorian Britain, crape manufacturers made huge profits. However, by the 1880’s, domestic sales had begun to decline, although exports worldwide were still flourishing. (In France, it was
successfully marketed as crape anglais, supposedly superior in style and quality to all other crapes.) By the turn of the century, crape had gone out of fashion and not even the First World War, with its terrible loss of life, could revive the market. Mourning crape ceased to be produced in the UK in 1940.
The decline of mourning etiquette
By the turn of the century, crape had gone out of fashion and not even the First
World War, with its terrible loss of life, could revive the market
The Victorian craze for mourning reached its peak between 1850 and 1885, with even families of limited means under strong societal pressure to adhere to the customs. Towards the end of the 19th century, the social rules for mourning had become increasingly complicated, particularly for women, with different periods of mourning for different family members or in-laws, accompanied by recommendations about which fabric to wear for which period or duration. Interestingly, although widows were expected to mourn their husbands for up to two-and-a-half years,
widowers could remarry as soon as they pleased, even while still in mourning for their first wife…
During the First World War,
Duchess of Windsor (right) at the Duke of Windsor funeral service, 1972
hardly a family in Britain, France or Germany didn’t mourn a husband, father, brother or son. Yet mourning was worn less than one might expect. This was partly due to a revolt against the abnormality of so many deaths, but also an effort to avoid depressing the morale of families with loved ones at the front and of soldiers on leave. Furthermore, many women were simply too busy nursing, driving ambulances, or replacing men on farms and in factories to bother with elaborate mourning dresses and hats or to observe customary social seclusion. In the 1920s and 30s, the upper
classes still wore fashionable mourning attire, which was heavily promoted by manufacturers of mourning fabrics such as Courtauld, whose sales had dropped. Widow’s caps were small, neat affairs, and veils were made from black crêpe georgette
54 | the hat magazine #110 Mourning hat with crape fabric
rather than crape and worn no longer than the hip. Periods of official Court Mourning were shortened and widows were now expected to mourn their husbands for eighteen months rather than two-and-a- half years. After the Second World War, mourning dress became much rarer, though it survived for state funerals, among royalty and in certain communities. Mourning hats were worn only on the day of the funeral itself and were typically small and simple. In 1963, Jackie Kennedy attended her husband’s burial wearing a pillbox hat with a shoulder-length veil covering her face, as did Wallis, widow of the Duke of Windsor, in 1972. Nowadays, sunglasses have replaced veils as a means of shrouding the eyes, especially at ‘celebrity’ funerals with a large press presence. It is clear that for most milliners mourning hats are no longer a profitable, or even a regular, source of income. However, there are some exceptions.
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