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Genealogy Fashions: Is Your Ancestor’s Hat Back in Style?

By Maureen A. Taylor

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Fashion is looking back not merely to the 1970s, but all the way to the 1920s and even 1880s, at least as far as hats are concerned.

Last Sunday’s New York Times fashion supplement featured advertisements showing old-fashioned-looking hats by designers Louis Vuitton and Donna Karan. Even the Bloomingdale’s ad featured a model in a vintage style hat.

I can’t show you the Louis Vuitton ad, but I can show you hats that resemble the ones worn by the models in the New York Times ads. It was a fashion spread for handbags, but the head wear looked liked these workmen’s hats from the 1850s. I’m serious! Vuitton added a grosgrain band above the brim, but the shape is very similar.

Donna Karan’s ad is online. The hat on the woman in the video strongly resembles those worn in the 1880s. In fact, I featured a similar looking hat in Photo Contest Submissions: Shirley Jenks Jacobs submitted this photo of a woman in a rolled brimmed hat with trim and a high crown.

Shirley Jenks Jacobs2.jpg

One more blast from the past was the Bloomingdale’s ad of a young model wearing a plush hat with a very wide brim and a plume of animal fur. It looked something like this image I own of a wedding from circa 1920. Don’t you love his hair? It helps date this image.

weddingedit.jpg

So which hat style will you wear this season? I’ll be looking through the photos in my Fashionable Folks: Bonnets and Hats, 1840-1900 for more matches.


Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor:

  • Fashionable Folks: Bonnets and Hats 1840-1900
  • Preserving Your Family Photographs
  • Fashionable Folks: Hairstyles 1840-1900
  • Finding the Civil War in Your Family Album
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