"After leaving the flat that morning Jane also had gone down to Edgestowe and bought a hat. She had before now expressed some contempt for the kind of woman who buys hats, as a man buys drinks, for a stimulant and a consolation. It did not occur to her that she was doing so on this occasion. She liked her clothes to be rather severe and in colours that were really good on serious aesthetic grounds--clothes which would make it plain to everyone that she was an intelligent adult and not a woman of the chocolate-box variety--and because of this preference, she did not know that she was interested in clothes at all. She was therefore a little annoyed when Mrs Dimble met her coming out of Sparrow's and said, 'Hullo dear! Been buying a hat? Come home to lunch and let's see it ...' ... ...
"'You'll have to wait for lunch till I've seen Jane's new hat,' said Mother Dimble [to her husband], and forthwith hurried Jane upstairs. There followed some minutes of conversation which was strictly feminine in the old-fashioned sense. Jane, while preserving a certain sense of superiority, found it indefinably comforting; and though Mrs Dimble had really the wrong point of view about such things, there was no denying that the one small alteration which she suggested did go to the root of the matter. When the hat was being put away again ..."
Ahh ... the gentle ... and not all so totally gentle ... Lewisian ironies (1943) in this nicely-observed account! But am I alone in musing with nostalgia on the days when women bought hats ... wore hats? Photographs of street scenes from the Interbellum ... not least, pictures from the opening of the (Anglican) Shrine Church of our Lady of Walsingham ... remind me of how vastly such vistas are improved by hats. Instead of all those grim 'Charity Shops' in our now deserted post-Brexit post-Covid High Streets, how splendid it would be if every third emporium were a purveyor of Ladies' Head Coverings ... each with a special mantilla department ...
I doubt if there is a woman in the world who doesn't look better in a hat. Even head-scarves ... And as for veils ... don't get me going on that ... it's enough to make a chap turn Moslem ...
6 comments:
No woman that wore a suitable hat ever failed to enhance her appearance and attractiveness.
In Philadelphia (USA not the Biblical one) there used to be a department store that even in more recent times bore a sign saying "hats trimmed free of charge" no doubt a puzzle to modern shoppers, but (as explained by a video I once saw with an elderly former hat dept. employee with a Philadelphia accent you could cut with a knife) once the lady bought her hat she could then have it trimmed with various bits of ribbon etc. artfully applied to get that special look.
Alas this is all long gone as is the department store itself, in this age of ripped jeans and T shirts with offensive slogans.
'Even' headscarves? Au contraire, headscarves are a most modest, excellent and above all charitable form of headgear in church, as they allow the mere male sitting in the pew behind to see the altar, something the finest millinery will not permit.
And men's hats. I fondly remember my father (RIP), a WWII veteran, wore a fedora to work every day.
Any time I've seen a pretty girl put on a beret, she becomes "super-pretty"!
Then again, hats need boxes, which are not readily found these days. And the boxes need a place and space in which to be put. It is not so simple a thing
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