Wearing Hats

Years ago every fashionable lady wore a hat to church, restaurants, travel, visiting, etc.  Growing up in the 50's and into the early 60's, I also wore hats.  My Mom would buy my sister and I a new Easter bonnet every spring to wear to church and on Sundays.  During the late 60's when women's lib came into vogue, hats went out of style.  I guess when women liberated themselves from corsets and bras and stockings and wearing dresses all the time, they quit wearing hats, too!  I always liked hats, though.   But I didn't have the courage to wear hats when nobody else was. 
     About 8 or 9 years ago I joined the Red Hat Society and started wearing lovely red hats to meetings.  See below:

Three of my ultra fancy Red Hat Society hats. 

Other than Red Hat meetings, I didn't wear any hats other than winter hats in the cold.   But about 3 or 4 years ago, the pastor from our church thought it would be a fun idea for the ladies of the parish to wear Easter Bonnet hats to church for Easter, and encouraged all the women to find some kind of hat to wear.  All of us ladies were game for that idea, and so I set out to find some kind of hat to wear for that Easter Sunday.  However, that particular Easter was in early March, and it was cold!   I remembered an antique store that had a booth just for hats in Bemidji MN, so I went there to find something.   What I found was a great vintage hat from the 1930's, made out of felted wool and very warm for a March Easter!
See below:

My vintage 1937 "pie plate" hat with navy blue netting and decorative key attachment.

Well, wearing hats again was so much fun, I decided to start wearing hats to church more often.  Every time I went to an antique store or thrift shop or flea market I would look for cute hats to wear.   Sometimes I would find nice hats in catalogs I got in the mail.     Pretty soon my collection of hats grew into plenty of nice ones to match almost any outfit.

Some more of the hats from my ever growing hat collection.

Just the other day I was in a thrift store in Fargo, and found this cute little navy straw hat for just a few dollars.

My latest purchase - navy blue with a navy 'carnation'

My husband teases me that pretty soon I will be the "Imelda Marcos" of the hat world.  If you recall, she was the Philippine lady who owned about a thousand pairs of shoes.  I don't think I'll ever get to that many hats, but I have to admit that it's hard to pass by any hat I see at the antique malls or second hand shops.   A dollar or two just might get me a new look.  Most of the hats I wear are either cloche style or brimmed hats.  I would like to find just the right vintage hat from the 40's or 50's with face netting, or maybe one of those "fascinator" hats that Princess Kate likes to wear?  You just never know.  For a vintage loving gal like me, wearing old style hats seems to put me into a long ago 'sisterhood' with all those fashionable ladies of years ago!