HAT

ORIGINS, LANGUAGE, STYLE

Enchanted hats, in worldwide folklore, are transformers. They change people into beings who extend, suddenly, beyond their everyday selves. The magic hat gives the wearer powers to fly and be invisible, ushers a person into secret worlds, exposes mysteries, grants impossible wishes and snatches the wearer from danger.  But the ordinary hat also transforms  – the crown initiates the leader; the turban embodies faith; the gang hat forms affiliation. And yet, though marking crucial elements of any society, the hat is also intensely personal. 

Appearing at least 30,000 years ago, possibly representing the new developments of human culture, and the beginnings of conceptual thinking, the hat has had a wild ride though history.   With a focus on Western commerce and its onset in the Middle Ages, Hat: Origins, Language, Style looks at the complexities of the long labor history. The world of hat-making, and its divide between the female milliners and the male hatters, moves from the handmade to the industrial and its story is as electric with genius, revolution and stardom as it is poisoned with illness, slavery and prejudice.  Milliners, in particular, through years of difficulty and slander, rose to become the orchestrators of the one of the 20th century’s great economies, as well as superstars of that era. Millinery also was the foundation of the some of the most iconic couturiers who shaped fashion – Coco Chanel, Halston, Charles James and Jean Lanvin all began as milliners. 

The 21st century has carried on this inventive and fabulous world of hats with new millinery superstars such as Philip Treacy, Stephen Jones, Nick Fouquet, Maiko Takeda and Muriel Nisse.   And hats continue to carry deep messages for our cultures, be it the way we wear them – perhaps to the side or tilted forward – or how we respond to their multiple codes. Hats are always fresh to us and have never lost their phenomenal resonance.