Recently I acquired a bound volume of the Girl’s Own Paper from 1895 – 1896. It contains a lot of reference to young women’s fashions in that period and is an inspiration to us as we suffer from “hat envy”and wish hat wearing will return. The graphic above comes from one of the articles.
The accompanying description states that these hats “take in all the principal styles we are wearing”.
The large hat is of beaver, with a velvet lining. It is white in colour, with black velvet, and black feathers, and black satin ribbon bows. Interestingly, ribbons and bows are all the rage right now.
The French “sailor hat”at the back is of dark blue felt with trimmings of white lace, blue feathers and blue velvet.
The hat with the waved brim has fur or jet to line the fronts and black and white feathers white lace being used for the band around the crown.
The article goes on to note that there are some very pretty felt hats with high crowns , and two or three quill feathers at the side, which are displayed in some of the larger West End Shops. From our current fashions as exhibited on the runways high crowns are in style now except they might be a bit exaggerated in our current fashions. What does everyone think? What have you observed?
Elsewhere the article notes that for travelling, cycling and ordinary rough wear there is the “Tam o’ Shanter”. I discussed this type of hat in a previous post.
The Girls Own Paper was published from 1880 to 1956. It was originally published by the Religious Tract Society. It has interesting articles about the society and culture relating to women over the period The articles are written as advice to young women and girls. You can pretty much guess at the type of advice and the attitude to women in general during that period. I will be posting some interesting articles related to hats and millinery. They are very interesting and throw a lot of light on the life of young women in the 1895 period. I love learning history from contemporary writings.
